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Summary: Over your four years working for Reed Richards, you'd given yourself one job: you can be his friend, but don't fall for Johnny Storm's charms. Too bad you had already failed that mission before it could even begin.
Warnings: 18+ ONLY MDNI, SMUT (making out, unprotected sex, p in v, nipple play, oral f. receiving, temperature play, creampie, aftercare), porn with a LOT of plot, slight hint of some angst, fluff, friends to lovers, Johnny is a massive flirt, mutual pining, SPOILERS! for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, female reader but no characteristics described, mentions of parental loss, maybe some incorrect stuff regarding the 60s and how it worked but it's a fantasy world, lightly edited so apologies for any mistakes
“We need to adjust the parameters for this. There’s a few more levels that I want to adjust, to ensure that we’ve scanned the baby for all possible anomalies,”
Years ago, when you had miraculously been offered the position as Dr. Reed Richards assistant, it was a dream come true. The smartest man alive, holding 18 Doctorate degrees himself, choosing you out of the thousands of applicants to be his assistant was a ‘pinch me’ moment. Of course, he didn’t want an assistant, it was thrust upon him by his wife, but you liked to think after all this time you’d wormed your way into his heart.
Working with Reed…was something else entirely. It was a learning curve, understanding just how the man’s brain worked. Even to this day, you weren’t sure you understood it. Even when things went perfectly, when test runs on prototypes worked out better than you could’ve ever imagined, Reed was never satisfied. Something could always be better, be improved, as if his brain was factoring in the hundreds of thousands of possibilities that could occur and alter your data. You made it work, though–with patience and understanding–you managed to find the best way to work around Reed’s faults and work with him, to support him.
What was supposed to be just a job in the Baxter Building became so much more. Through it, you gained a family you never thought quite possible.
Reed’s wife, Susan Storm, was another one of the brightest minds that you had ever encountered. Kind, compassionate, but fiercely loyal and unafraid to step up to the plate when a challenge arrived, when the people she loved were threatened. You admired her and everything she stood for, the way she carried herself day in and day out. And since the day you had arrived at the Baxter Building, she welcomed you with open arms, as if you had always been part of the family.
Ben Grimm was the most talented pilot you’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. The perfect counter to Reed and his panicky mind at times, having known the man long enough to understand his quirks in a way you could only hope to. Ben was always kind, always open, always ready to lend a hand or be a shoulder for anyone that needed to listen.
Johnny Storm…was the bane of your existence, in the best way.
“Wrong address, sweetheart. The modeling agency is two blocks down. I could escort you over there, if you’d like?”
Those were the first words the hot-headed younger brother of Sue Storm had said to you, passing by you in the lobby of the building on your first day, a wink thrown in for good measure when he’d spoken.
Having followed Dr. Richards' work long enough, which meant knowing bits about his personal life, you were well aware of the reputation that Johnny Storm carried. The papers and magazines, talk shows and gossip blogs, all called him a playboy simply because he’d never been in a long-term relationship but was still a ladies man. You never saw him like that, though. All you saw was a brilliant guy, a lover of space, even if that passion of his was sometimes overlooked because of his ‘love for women’.
And, oh, how you wished his empty, blatant flirting with you didn’t bring a blush to your cheeks every time, or make your heart skip a beat, but it did. Every single time, it did. You weren’t blind: Johnny Storm was objectively handsome and much too charming for his own good, and you decided right then and there that you would use every ounce of your willpower to ignore his empty flirts. You didn’t need to become another girl hopelessly in love with the heartthrob of the Fantastic Four, even if your heart ached when you saw him with anyone else.
Those four had become important to you in ways that you would never be able to describe, but Sue always described it best: a family.
That’s why when four of the closest people to you in life went up into space for Reed’s exploration mission, and came back cosmically changed forever, you never left their sides. They were your family, and family stuck together, no matter what.
“Reed,” your comment was cautious, hands stilling at your work station in the lab of the Baxter Building. Glancing over your shoulder, Reed was hunched over the machine he’d built in just a day, specifically to monitor the health of the baby growing inside of Sue’s stomach, as Herbie rocked back and forth beside him. “You’ve scanned Sue a thousand times at this point-”
“That’s an exaggeration. I’ve scanned her 123 times-”
“That’s not the point,” he glanced over at you then, looking away the second he saw the pointed look you were throwing at him. With a sigh, you abandoned your work, leaning back against the table behind you to watch him fret over the device. “We have run every test possible, scanned for every data point that links back to the fluctuations in your DNA from the cosmic rays we noted years ago, and we’ve gotten nothing. Your baby is okay.”
“There are still more tests to run,”
Another sigh escaped past your lips, and you allowed yourself to hang your head with a shake.
Since the moment Sue had announced her pregnancy, he’d been like this: even more on edge than usual. Baby-proofing the kitchen, smoke detectors in every single room and hallway, baby gates around every corner, it was getting insufferable. A sweet gesture, overall, and a testament to how much he loved and adored Sue, but exhausting to everyone else that had to be in his presence.
“Fine, but I’m not breaking the news to Sue that you want to scan her…again,”
“I already told her to meet me down here before dinner for another scan. We can adjust the parameters tomorrow. I want another data set from today’s scan at the current parameters to compare the changes with,” Reed never looked in your direction, still fiddling with the machine in front of him. “You’re staying for dinner, yes?”
“I’m making it,” was the response you shot back to him, powering down your workstation in the lab and rising from your chair, crossing the room to stand in front of him. “Apparently Sue has been craving spaghetti, and requested my family recipe.”
“You can’t argue with a pregnant woman,” Reed muttered, just loud enough for you to hear, but he still never looked up. “I’ll see you up there for dinner, then. There’s a few more tests that I want to run.”
“You also have a meeting at 5:45 and one at 6:15,” you shot back to him as you turned to leave the lab, checking the desk calendar lying beside your work station. There was a hum from the man, the smallest acknowledgement you were going to get, so you set your sights on Herbie and waved him forward. “Come on, Herb. An extra hand in the kitchen is always nice.”
As much as you thought of the Fantastic Four as your family, you never stayed for dinner often. You always tried your hardest to uphold the lines between your work life and personal life, not wanting to blur them completely (though, you were sure you had already blurred them enough for it to be too late). There had been plenty of times over the years where you’d stayed for dinner, usually once a month at this rate.
Sue always invited you, and you never wanted to disappoint her, and you gave in often. Ben had a way of wrangling you into saying yes before you were ever given the chance to speak at all. Reed had only asked once, asking you to stay back for the dinner months ago in which they announced to you that Sue was pregnant.
Johnny asked every day. You said no, most of the time, but when you did stay for dinner it was usually because those captivating, bright blue eyes were staring into your soul and pleading with you to stay.
Speak of the devil: there he sat at the dining room table. Clad in a white t-shirt with their logo resting over the pocket and the blue pants of his suit, a weird sight given that you had been in the lab with Reed all day and didn’t think any of them had left to attend to any ‘hero’ work.
You didn’t say a word as you strolled past him into the kitchen with Herbie on your heels, simply plucking the box of Lucky Charms from his hands as you swooped past. It was impossible not to smile to yourself at the scoff of indignation he let out at your actions.
“Hey-!”
“You’re going to spoil your appetite,” you shot back at him, throwing him a smirk over your shoulder before slotting the now closed cereal box into the cupboard where it usually sat.
Herbie beeped out a set of beeps that, over the years, you had come to understand. This time, he was agreeing with you, pointing out some facts about how eating out of the box lacked moderation, and would in turn actually spoil his appetite. You gave the little robot a fist bump for that, something that Johnny shot the little helper a glare for.
“Come on, Herbert, you’re supposed to take my side on these things!” There was no real malice in his words as he got up from the dining room table, rounding into the kitchen as you took the pots and pans that Herbie had gathered for you, setting them out along the counter where you needed them. “Baby, you didn’t tell me you were staying for dinner.”
When you told yourself that you weren’t going to fall into the trap that was the charming and charismatic Johnny Storm, you weren’t prepared for two things.
One: when he got comfortable around someone, he could be an even bigger flirt. Pet names were constant. Baby, sweetheart, honey, doll, love…you name it, Johnny called you it. Constantly. So constantly you were sure the blush on your cheeks was a permanent staple. He’d even once called you his little flame–that had been met with the tip of your heel being dug into his foot.
The second thing you weren’t prepared for: touch. Johnny Storm didn’t understand personal space, not when he was comfortable around you. If you were in the room with him, he was standing less than a foot from you, and you always knew because you could feel the warmth that radiated off his unusually hot skin. His hands would always rest on your arm, your elbow, right at the bottom of your lower back.
Moments like this in the kitchen were normal, and yet they still fried your brain. That simply little pet name, and Johnny’s warm hand ghosting over your lower back, before coming to rest on your hip. Clearing your throat, you gently pried his hand from your body, shooting him a look as you moved around to get the ingredients for dinner, hoping your flushed cheeks didn’t give you away.
“When your pregnant sister has cravings for my personal family recipe spaghetti, I’m required to oblige her,”
“I asked you to make this for me two weeks ago and you refused,”
Johnny followed close behind you, like a little puppy following its owner. You tried, and failed, to contain your smile at his actions. The media might paint him as some sex god (you weren’t going to lie…if he wanted to be, he could be) but you saw him for what he was: the epitome of a little golden retriever at times.
“Well you aren’t a hormonal pregnant woman with super powers,” you shot back at him, taking the opened jar of spaghetti sauce from Herbie’s hand and dumping it into the pot on the stove top, turning up the heat on the boiling pot of water for the noodles Herbie had laid out for you.
“No, but Johnny is a hormonal guy with super powers, who adores your cooking,” bumping his hip with yours, Johnny stole the wooden spoon from your hand with ease, dipping it into the simmering sauce to stir. With that same ease, he leaned down just slightly, leaving a kiss to your bare shoulder that felt as if it had left a brand into your skin. “Johnny also happens to just adore you, and loves when you stay for dinner.”
You had given up on the blush by now. He’d surely seen it enough over the years with his incessant flirting, there was no use in hiding it. Bumping your hip back with him, biting into your bottom lip in a failed attempt to conceal the smile spreading across your lips, you stole the wooden spoon back from him.
“Johnny also talks in the third person too much, and is an insufferable flirt half the time,” he dipped his hand into the sauce, coating his fingers in red as you whacked lightly at his hand, forcing him to withdraw as quickly as he’d dipped in. “What have I told you about doing that!”
He’d laughed, one of your favorite sounds, as you glanced over at him with a bright smile, unable to truly stay mad at him…ever.
That was, until he dipped his sauce-covered ring finger and middle finger into his mouth to lick the sauce clean off, eyes never leaving yours and a smirk curling up on his lips. It forced you to swallow the lump that had formed in your throat and look away as quickly as you could, feeling a different kind of heat swelling in your body: yeah, Johnny knew exactly what he was doing.
“Not sure, baby, that look you’re giving me right now doesn’t scream that I’m insufferable-”
“Oh, that’s exactly what it’s screaming,” you shot back, even with the ghost of a smile pulling at your lips as Herbie readied the garlic bread on the counter behind you. “If you’re not going to help, you can leave this kitchen. I don’t care if you live here.”
Johnny rolled his eyes in response, hopping up onto the counter next to the stove where you worked. You caught the box of noodles he knocked over before they could fall to the ground, shooting him a look as he held his hands up innocently, dumping them into the boiling water pot.
“You basically live here, too,”
“I don’t-”
“Yeah, because you keep refusing the room that Sue prepared for you,”
He…wasn’t wrong. Two years ago, Sue had transformed what was previously the guest room into a room that looked like it had been built just for you. Your favorite color on the walls, a matching quilt set on the bed, and she’d offered it to you. A place to stay, to live, given that Reed sometimes had you in the Baxter Building until the oddest hours of the morning.
You declined, still desperate to keep that line between your work life and your personal life separate, as tempting of an offer as it was. Sue wasn’t slighted by your decision at all, instead offering it to you to use whenever you needed to. There had been times in which you had taken up that offer, a few changes of clothes tucked away in the room on the odd chance that you’d need them.
“This place is your home, not mine,” you didn’t look at Johnny as you spoke, simply shaking your head as you stirred both the sauce and the noodles in their respective pots. “I’m Reed’s assistant, I’m not family-”
“Stop it,”
Even with the heat that rolled off Johnny Storm, every time his bare skin touched your own it sent a shiver straight down the length of your spine. His hand curled around your jawline, thumb and index finger pinching at your chin to force you to look up at him, to gaze into those intense blue eyes and the look on his face that had morphed so quickly from playful to serious.
“Johnny-”
“You are family, whether you like it or not,” the statement didn’t surprise you, it wasn’t the first time in your four years of knowing him that Johnny had said something like this to you, or anyone on the team for that matter. It always made you feel warm inside, though, to hear him say it, to see that loyalty and love for the people he cared about shine through in his words, such a stark contrast to the way the media sometimes portrayed him. “There’s not a thing I wouldn’t do for you.”
That was new. He hadn’t made a declaration like that to you before.
It was something about the look in his eyes as he said it–so genuine, so soft–that had you melting into his touch. His hand curled back up to your cheek, thumb just barely caressing the apple of your cheek, leaving a trail of heat with every swipe of his finger against your skin. Your heart betrayed you, fluttering in that moment like it always did.
These moments used to be few and far between. You didn’t know how else to describe them besides just calling them moments. Over the first few years of knowing Johnny Storm, there were small moments where that empty flirts verged on the edge of something different, something raw and real. But in the last year, they happened more often than they didn’t. Johnny wasn’t pictured out with as many women anymore, wasn’t brazenly caught flirting with anyone with legs and a pulse at events. And in moments like this, even in front of his family, he’d touch you, caress you, speak to you in a way that felt so genuine, that felt like it was real. Like the flirting was no longer just empty, meaningless fun.
That line between your work and personal life might have been a muddled mess, but the line between being Johnny Storm’s friend and something entirely more was practically non-existent now.
“You say that to all your women?” you quipped back, trying to hold your own, even as you were melting inside and your voice came out as a whisper. The playful look on Johnny’s face returned in a second, his fingers instead pinching the cheek he’d just been so softly caressing.
“Never, honey. Those words are reserved for my brother-in-law’s pretty little assistant,”
In typical Johnny fashion, he was able to dissolve and ruin whatever the moment was in an instant with his usual ‘charm’. Swatting his hand away, you returned your attention to the food on the stove in front of you, smiling to yourself as Herbie beeped out a popular song you’d heard on the radio behind you.
“You always have a line, don’t you?”
“Hey, you know what you signed up for, being friends with all this,” he jokingly motioned to his body, and you caught sight of the smile lighting up his face again as you laughed incredulously at his actions. “As part of the package deal, being friends with me, you are legally required to attend movie night in the living room with me after dinner.”
You hummed in response, even if you were smiling the entire time just from listening to him talk.
“This sounds like an impromptu movie night-”
“All of our movie nights are impromptu, babe-”
“I saw earlier that channel 2 is playing The Sound of Music tonight,” you shot back at him, finally looking up at him with an expectant look on your face. “That’s what I want to watch.”
Johnny groaned, throwing his head back and knocking it against the cupboards with a wince on his face. You couldn’t help but chuckle at his overdramatic antics, as usual.
“But channel 3 is showing Psycho!”
“And you dipped your hand–which, god knows where that thing might have been–into my sauce for dinner,”
Johnny opened his mouth to speak, before mulling over your words, and effectively shutting it with a nod.
“You know what, if it gets you to have a movie night with me, then I’ll take it,”
God, you adored this man, more than you should. More than you wanted to. In his presence, especially now, you were pretty sure the smile on your face was a constant, that it would never leave, as you laughed at him once more.
Finishing off the special blend of additions to your sauce, giving it another swirl with the wooden spoon, you brought it up to your lips for a quick taste. Satisfied, you held one hand under the spoon to keep it from dripping, holding it up toward Johnny.
“Alright, give it a taste,”
His eyes stayed locked on yours, that familiar intensity and warmth in them keeping you locked in place, holding your breath, as he took a quick slurp from the spoon. Smacking his lips together, running his tongue out along his lips, he gave a definitive nod.
“As always…perfection. Though, I expect nothing less from you,”
Before you could retort to his cheesy comment, his hand reached out, eyes still locked on yours, as he cupped your chin once more and ran his finger over your lips. With the slightest of glances down, you saw the small spot of red on his finger, the remnants of the sauce he’d so gently just wiped from your lips.
Glancing back up to those blue eyes you loved more than you cared to admit, you caught the way they finally glanced down at your lips, before looking away as if to not get caught.
“...am I interrupting something?”
As if Johnny had burst into flames and burned you, you jumped away from him immediately the second you heard the voice of Sue Storm across the room. You never even looked back up at Johnny, or turned around to look at the woman by the dining room table, just stared down into the sauce pot as you continued to stir it and the noodles.
“Actually, sis, you very much are interrupting something here,” Johnny called out across the room, and you could see him gesturing with his hands between you both from the corners of your vision.
“Johnny,” you rolled your eyes, glancing over at him with flushed red cheeks from what had just transpired. “Sue isn’t interrupting anything.”
“She kind of is. We were kind of having a moment here-”
“Johnny, we were not having a moment,”
You very much were having a moment, but you weren’t admitting that to him. His ego burned hot enough, no need to stroke the fire.
Sue laughed, rounding into the kitchen as she stopped by Herbie, thanking him and taking the garlic bread tray from him to pop into the oven he had preheated.
“Johnny, why don’t you go get cleaned up for dinner and stop bothering the poor girl. Bad enough I’m making her cook for me, she doesn’t need you hovering,”
The man let out a sigh, muttering something mocking toward his sister, as he threw himself off the counter with dramatic flair. He wasn’t done making your heart race, though, his hand curling around the back of your head as he planted a kiss directly to your hairline, before he disappeared from the kitchen with a pat to Herbie’s head.
The pots on the stove were forgotten as you turned around, simply watching him disappear with an incredulous look on your face. Quickly, your eyes shot to Sue, who was watching you with a smirk as she leaned against the island counter.
“There was nothing happening there,”
“I didn’t say there was,”
“But you’re giving me that look,”
“I’m not giving you any kind of look,” the blonde laughed, stepping up beside you to take the wooden spoon from your hand, tasting the sauce herself with a happy little sigh. “Just…enjoying watching the show from the sidelines, waiting for one of you to make a move.”
“Sue, there’s no move to make. He’s just…he’s Johnny,”
“And Johnny is my brother,” she shot back with a grin. “And Johnny has never been like that with someone, just with you.”
You didn’t get to respond, before Herbie cut in with another series of beeps. Your eyes shot wide as you listened to what he was saying, cheeks flaring an even brighter shade of red as Sue choked on air, laughing to herself at your side.
“HERBIE! THAT’S SO INAPPROPRIATE!”
❤︎
It had been two weeks, and Reed had somehow managed to scan Sue a total of 142 times, now. Sometimes, you wondered how she was able to put up with his hovering, the hovering that had gotten exponentially worse since she announced she was pregnant.
“I’m not getting clear imaging,” Reed called out from the other side of the lab, the only sound in the room being the incessant beeping of the machine he’d built to monitor the baby, and the solder iron in your hand as it worked away on the small device in front of you. You shook your head at his comments once more, adjusting the eye protectors resting on the bridge of your nose as little sparks jumped up as the last piece of the triangular device was finally attached. “I’m going to have Herbie recalibrate this, I don’t like the data output I’m getting, I want a clear image on the next scan. Is the second bridge device ready?”
“Just finished fixing the soldering on the stand, so it should be good to go,” you shot back, tossing your eye protectors down at your workstation, lifting the device carefully and carrying it over to Reed’s station, setting it down with the matching device. “And, once again, you really don’t need to scan the baby again.”
You were met with silence, unsurprisingly. Until, the workstation down the room set off its alarm bell, a familiar tone that had you stand up straighter where you stood.
“New deep space transmission,” there was a hint of elation in Reed’s tone as he said it, quickening his pace across the room with Herbie hot on his trail. “Let’s identify the origin, then record it for further analysis.”
Quickly walking back over to your workstation, your eyes drifted to that desk calendar sitting next to you, and to today’s date: a poorly drawn flame, and the time “2:15” scribbled in a barely legible handwriting that you recognized instantly. Even if you hadn’t, the terribly drawn heart with your initials in it scribbled in the corner would’ve given it away.
“Your analysis is going to have to wait, Reed,” you called out with a sigh, knowing you weren’t the one who put this meeting on the calendar, but you sure knew who had. “You have a 2:15 incoming.”
“2:15? What 2:15?” Reed never even looked in your direction, focused on the new transmission. “You didn’t tell me there was anything on my calendar.”
“Well, I didn’t put this one on the calendar myself, but you must have cleared it at some point…”
Just then, the elevator doors to the lab popped open with a familiar ding sound.
“Ah–Reed!”
Good god, Johnny Storm was trying to kill you. You weren’t even sure if that was an exaggeration at this point, because you wouldn’t put it past him.
Blue looked good on him, it always had, but the navy blue button up he was wearing was doing nothing for your mind that was screaming at you to “keep it professional.” It didn’t help that the first few buttons were already undone, giving a slight peak to his chest. The white chinos–those were the nail in your metaphorical coffin. They had no right to be that tight, and he had no right to look so damn good in them.
“Ah…that 2:15,” you tried your best to conceal your laugh at Reed’s comment across the lab. “Johnny, do we have to today?”
“Johnny, do we have to today? As if I didn’t ask to put it on the schedule,” the blonde man in question mumbled mockingly to himself as he slid up to your side at your workstation as you laughed at his antics. One of his hands grabbed the back of your neck, tugging you closer before you could even think about it, pressing another kiss to your hairline. Suddenly, you felt like you were back in the kitchen weeks ago. “Darling, have I ever told you how breathtaking you look in your lab coat?”
“It’s a white coat, Johnny, it’s nothing special,” you deflected, taking just a short glance up at him before you had to look away, already knowing you were as red as the table beneath your hands.
“But the girl wearing it is-”
“Johnny, do you want to have this meeting or do you want to flirt with my assistant?”
You hung your head with a groan, even as Johnny laughed at the comment from his brother-in-law. His arm slung around your waist, hand settling on your hip as the heat that rolled off his body enveloped you for a moment, letting yourself lean into the side hug he gave you and the squeeze to your hip, before he was gone.
“There’s enough time in the day to do both! No, I had some thoughts about the new suit designs,”
“There are no new space suit designs-”
You glanced over at the pair as they met face-to-face in the middle of the lab, Johnny holding up the sheet he was concealing behind his back.
“You finished them years ago…they have dust on them,” Johnny deadpanned, letting out a sigh as Reed took the design sheet from him. “Look, I get it. You’re going to be a father soon, you’re scared-”
“I’m not-I’m not scared,” Reed cut in immediately, and you could hear the anxious undertone that overtook him immediately at Johnny’s words. Without even having to be summoned, knowing how his brain worked after all this time, you simply shrugged off your lab coat and stalked over to the pair, taking the design sheet from Reed’s hands without a word and placing it on his chalkboard full of equations. “I’m-I’m busy, Johnny. I’m busy. I’m busy, there’s a difference.”
“He means busy on his pace to scan Sue at least 200 times before she gives birth,” you shot back, sending Reed a bright smile that he frowned at, clearly seeing that you were siding with Johnny here. “Not terrified of becoming a father at all, those two things definitely don’t correlate.”
Johnny laughed, smile bright, and it only brightened the one on your face, a tug somewhere deep in your chest pulling on you when he locked eyes with you. Reed snapped your attention back to him in an instant, running a hand down his face as he gestured in Herbie’s direction.
“Just handle the new deep space transmission, please, instead of ganging up on me with Johnny,”
You laughed, heels clicking against the floors of the lab as you joined Herbie’s side as he waited for the transmission to be scratched into the record. There was a woosh of air, the air beside you heating up instantly as a hand found its way to rest on your lower back.
“Have you listened to it yet?”
The smile on your face softened as you glanced over at Johnny, who was staring down at the record in front of you both with pure excitement in his eyes. Beyond the physical moments, his flirtatious moments, these were the moments that had your plan to not fall for Johnny Storm splitting at the seams, if it hadn’t already.
“Seems to be a lot more of the same, just another complex signal,” Johnny left your side, the heat going with him, as he leaned against the blue table behind him. Herbie took the record from its place, rolling over to Johnny to hand it directly to him. “You’re more than welcome to take it with you, give it a listen.”
He twirled the record in his hands with a grin, absentmindedly reaching out to scratch the top of Herbie’s head. That simple little action elicited a giggle, hand coming up to cover your mouth as Johnny glanced up at you with a smirk.
“What’s so funny?”
“Herbie isn’t a dog, and yet you treat him like one,” you explained, stepping up just in front of him and grabbing his hand lightly, stopping the twirling of the record in his hands. “Also, you do know you aren’t supposed to get your fingerprints all over these, right?”
It was Johnny’s turn to laugh as he spun his hand, catching it in his palm and bringing it up to his lips, leaving a scorching hot, but gentle, kiss to your knuckles, sending a shiver straight through your bones. He didn’t even have a retort to your comment, just simply held your hand in his, thumb stroking along your skin, while your entire body flushed with a feeling you wanted to ignore.
“Johnny, what have I told you about flirting in my lab? I need my assistant, we’re trying to run a test,”
The moment was gone in seconds, your hand dropped from Johnny’s as he raced to the other side of the lab, following closely behind Reed and tossing the record onto the closest table.
You could only shake your head with a laugh, walking beside Herbie to join them, knowing Reed would be mumbling to himself the rest of the week about this moment and how much Johnny liked pissing him off.
“Cool! I got time,”
Reed didn’t roll his eyes as you and Herbie joined them back at your workstations, but you could see how much he wanted to. Holding the device you’d just finished off in his hand, you watched in the same awe you had for four years as his arm stretched across the length of the lab, placing it right back beside your own workstation.
“Bridge teleportation test one,” grabbing the notebook lying beside the device that contained your notes on the project, you flipped to a new page, prepared to note down any disparities that occurred during the test, as Reed placed an egg on the newly soldered stand. “Movement of organic matter six meters.”
Johnny grabbed the protective glasses beside the work desk, about to slip them on, before Reed took them with no hesitation and slipped them on himself. The blonde turned to you with an incredulous look that simply drew a laugh from you.
“Those are his pair, you can’t touch his pair,” you teased the man, who simply shot you a wink in return, as you both took the pairs that Herbie was holding out to you both. Johnny gave the little robot a quick fist bump.
Such a simple action that still had you grinning in childlike adoration at the side of his face.
Reed gave you a simple look, confirming you were ready. You gave him a nod, as he took hold of the switch to activate the device.
“Let’s run it,”
The whirring of the machine sounded, three silver beams of energy emitting from the device and encasing the egg within a sphere of energy. There was a shift in the room as that energy grew, as the hum of the machine filled the air, before there was a simple POP–and the egg was gone.
One glance from each of you over your shoulders was enough to confirm that the egg was, in fact, sitting on the opposite platform. Completely untouched and intact.
“It worked!” Johnny exclaimed, gesturing toward the egg.
That’s when the power to the building cut out.
It wasn’t surprising, given the notes you both had taken. The amount of energy that needed to be funneled through the device in order to channel enough energy to actually move organic matter without hurting it was sure to be beyond the energy limits of the Baxter Building. A full power outage…not what you were expecting. Not that you could write that note down in the pitch black of the room.
“Johnny,” Reed’s voice called out in the dark, steady with no hint of any emotion you could decipher in it. The man in question came to life beside you, body engulfed in flames, the flame resistant fabric of his specially tailored clothing working overtime to keep him from being stark naked. He stood with his hands on his hips, and even from the side you could see the smirk curling up on his lips. “Could you reset the breaker?”
You’d known Johnny long enough now, been his friend for enough years, to know him. Know him better than a colleague should. The instant dip in his smirk to a frown was clear, the tension in his broad shoulders, as he tossed his glasses down onto the table. He didn’t spare either of you another look, crossing the room to grab the record.
“Other way-”
“I know,” Johnny snapped, beside his flame engulfed body was on the other side of the lab, flipping the breaker as the electricity of the building roared to life again. The second it did, he was in the elevator, doors shutting without another word.
Neither you nor Reed spoke for a moment, simply looking down at the bridge teleportation device on the table in front of him.
“I’ve upset him,”
Reed didn’t phrase it like a question, he said it like a statement. Both were true, though. Reed always knew when he had upset Johnny, but never how he had really upset him.
You took a deep breath, nodding, as you scribbled a note in your notebook before turning on your heels, stalking back to your own workstation.
“Well, he went out of his way to put time on your calendar just to talk to you about the suits, and you did dismiss him…” you trailed off as you reached your station, eyes flickering back down to that desk calendar beside you. You couldn’t help it, letting your fingers lightly trail over that little heart with your initials, smiling to yourself, wishing it meant more than what it did mean: nothing. “Johnny loves space, he only got to go up once before…this all happened. You can’t blame him for wanting to go back.”
It was quiet for another moment in the lab, before Reed spoke up again.
“You know him well…better than I think I do,”
The flush in your cheeks was inevitable at that, embarrassment flooding you as it was easy for you to read between the lines of what Reed was trying to insinuate.
“I-I just listen to him. I always listen,”
It was quiet again.
“Go check on him,” was all Reed said. “If there’s anyone he’d want to talk to right now, it’s you.”
You wanted to argue, to save the crumbling bits of that wall between work and personal, but even you knew it was too late for that.
Johnny’s bedroom door was just two down from the guest room Sue had offered you years ago, a bathroom being the only thing that separated them. Ben’s room was at the other end of the hallway, along with the nursery where the soon to be baby Richards would sleep.
You may not have stayed in that guest room often, but you’d been in these hallways enough to know it like the back of your hand. To know it like it was your own home.
There were countless nights, before you’d make the short walk back to your apartment, where Johnny had coerced you into movie nights in his room. He’d never try anything, never push you into something, always leaving the door open to make sure you knew he wasn’t bringing you upstairs for some alternative reason. His room was just quieter, and felt more private. It gave you the chance to see the side of Johnny that the world didn’t get to see.
The space lover, who spent his life dreaming of being an astronaut, of going into space and seeing the stars. He was a thrill-seeker, always wanting to live his life on the edge, to find joy in those rushes of adrenaline. But beyond it all, just a good man. A man who had an entire collection of records lining one wall of his room, organized from his favorite records to his least favorite, even though he claimed there wasn’t really a least favorite. The world got to know the Human Torch, but in the confines of those four walls, you got to know Johnny Storm. The second you did, you knew your heart was fucked.
You found him in a spot you’d found him in before: leaning against the floor to ceiling windows of his room, staring out at the spaceship he hadn’t stepped foot in for four years. Your heart broke slightly from where you stood in the doorway, able to see the longing that was woven into his frown, that shone through his eyes that never strayed far from the Excelsior.
“You know,” with a few steps into the room, standing beside the record player, you lifted the needle to stop the replay of the foreign language from the deep space transmission that played on a loop. Johnny looked over, a soft smile overtaking his frown at the sight of you, as you kept your own voice soft and light. “I don’t think deep space transmissions are the right background music if you’re going to stare longingly out your window.”
Johnny laughed in a huff, turning on his heel to flick through his record collection.
“And suggestions then for a melancholic moment such as this?”
“Elvis typically has some hits that can set that mood,”
You watched him, the slight shake in his body that hinted he was laughing again, before he plucked a record from the shelves and rose back to his feed. Standing beside the record player with you, he slid it into your hands without another word and plopped into the chair just across from the player.
With care, like you’d done it a hundred times before (you had, right here in this room), you slipped the record onto the player, dropping the needle down as it coasted along the grooves etched into the record.
When no-one else can understand me, when everything I do is wrong…you give me hope and consolation. You give me strength to carry on.
The lyrics settled in you heavily, but it made your body feel lighter. It was impossible not to read into them, to not think too hard about the deliberate music choice that Johnny had made. You couldn’t help that, somewhere deep in your heart where you had buried your feelings for the flaming man years ago, you were hoping these lyrics were a personal message to you.
“Reed send you to check on me?” Johnny asked after a moment, leaning back in his chair, arms folded over his chest as he watched you. Composing yourself for a moment, shoving the flurry of butterflies beating against your chest down, you turned to face him and his blue eyes with a shrug.
“Technically, but I would’ve come on my own,” Johnny hummed, the ghost of a smile on his lips, as his gaze found its way back to the spaceship taunting him just beyond the window. “Come on, matchstick, talk to me.”
He huffed out another laugh, stretching his arms above his head as you tried your best to keep your eyes trained on his face and not drift down his torso. Eventually, his arms settled back across his chest, his gaze still stuck out the window.
“I don’t know…it’s stupid. Last time we went up, we came back with superpowers, trust me, I get that. Now, he’s got a kid on the way. But I know–I know–that he knows how much space means to me. So, when he just dismisses me like that-”
“It makes you feel inadequate? Like you’re a child?” Johnny’s gaze found you again as you shrugged with a light smile. “I’ve worked in an enclosed space with him almost every day for four years, Johnny. He used to make me feel that way all the time, until I realized that Reed’s never trying to make me feel like that.”
“I know he’s not doing it on purpose…doesn’t mean I’m not going to shit talk him in the confines of these walls,” he gestured around the room as you laughed, coming to stand beside his chair, looking down on him as he sighed once more. His hands fell, gripping his knees, as he rubbed them back and forth against the fabric of his pants. “I love space. Simple as that.”
You hummed, bending down beside the chair Johnny sat in so that you were essentially squatting before him, having to look up at him. Hesitation caught you for just a second, your brain actively fighting a war with your heart as you raised your hands, but you ultimately took his hands in yours.
All it took was a second for your eyes to drift over to the table beside him. One lamp, a stack of books, and the flash of a polaroid photo leaning against those books: a photo of you. Taken at some point in the lab, laughter written across your face, your hand almost blocking a portion of the lens as you tried to stop him from taking the photo. You didn’t even remember it being taken in the first place.
Good god, he was really going to be the death of you.
Eyes quickly back on him, with a little squeeze to his hands, you gave Johnny the most comforting smile you could, even as your heart did somersaults in your chest.
“I know you do. You’ll go back to space, Johnny, I promise,”
His eyes watched your hands, and you could see it on his face: that hint of adoration, that hint of something genuine that suggested it wasn’t all just a game, that you weren’t imaging moments for more than they were.
“What if I don’t?”
“You’re Johnny Storm, I’ve never seen you not get something you wanted before. Especially not something you want this bad,”
His mouth parted just slightly as he hesitated. You watched as his tongue darted out, just barely grazing over the edge of his bottom lip, before you flicked your eyes back to his.
“You’re wrong…I think there’s something I want more. Been trying to get it for awhile, but…she just keeps slipping through my fingers somehow,”
That tug on your heart was back. Your heart was surely beating so fast that it could be heard, hammering against your ribcage, as his thumbs glided back and forth across your skin. You could barely think of a response, too stuck on his words: the closest thing to a confession of any kind you’d heard in four years. Raw, real, genuine.
Johnny stood quickly, barely giving you a chance to potentially think of a response as he tugged you back to your feet. His arm enveloped your waist, your hand falling to his bicep as he still held your other hand in the air beside you both. You weren’t sure now if the flush crawling up your neck into your cheeks was from the moment, or from the heat radiating off of him.
“W-What are you doing?”
“We’re dancing,” he said it as if it was the most casual thing in the world, that usual smirk of his back on his face. Whatever had happened moments before, whatever confession may or may not have been said, was brushed away in an instant, that charming, flirty personality of his back in full force. “Can’t turn on Elvis and not dance, I think that’s a literal crime.”
“I didn’t know you even knew how to dance,”
“Oh, I don’t, Sue’s been telling me for years that I have two left feet,” Johnny shot back, shooting a wink down at you as his hand readjusted its grip along your waist. “Can’t be that hard with the prettiest girl in the building in my arms, right?”
Swaying back and forth, wrapped up in the heat of his body, in the faint smell of the cologne that coated his clothing, you were very certain that Johnny Storm was going to be the death of you.
And when you smile the world is brighter. You touch my hand and I'm a king. Your kiss to me is worth a fortune, your love for me is everything.
Johnny tilted his head back from you by just a hair, and you followed suit. Deep blue eyes, as captivating to you as they were the first time you ever saw them, shone with an emotion you couldn’t quite decipher. If you could, you weren’t sure you would survive knowing.
Faces just an inch away, the closest and most intimate moment you’d ever shared with the man you knew in your heart was never going to be just your friend, your colleague, you were verging on the edge of making a terrible choice. Of opening the floodgates, of unlocking the feelings you’d buried away so long ago and letting them flow.
“This is an interesting little relationship you and I have, you know,”
Johnny always found a way to ruin these moments, and this was just another example. Lips tugged up into a smirk, mischief swarming his eyes as he teased you, that fleeting moment of raw vulnerability was gone.
Hand slipped from his, body pulled back from his and a roll of your eyes, you turned on your heel within seconds.
“So typical of you, Storm,”
“What-? What did I do!”
You huffed out a laugh, a smile creeping onto your lips even as you tried to keep it at bay, as you threw your comment over your shoulder as you walked toward the door.
“You went and killed the moment, Johnny, as per usual,”
“...so you admit it, we WERE having a moment!”
You barked out a laugh, shaking your head as you crossed through the doorframe. You could never stay mad at him, not when your heart yearned for him in a way you wish it didn’t.
“Come on! At least let me make it up to you. Will you stay for dinner?”
With a final glance cast over your shoulder toward him, you shot him a bright smile.
“If you’re lucky, flame boy!”
❤︎
Yeah, you really couldn’t say no to Johnny Storm.
Not when he’d spoken so sweetly to you, held you so tenderly, and all around just invaded every part of your brain and your heart. To be fair, he barely had to try honestly to do that.
It wasn’t shocking to see Ben in the kitchen, it seemed to be one of his happy places. You weren’t complaining: on the nights you did stay for dinner, and Ben was cooking, you knew you were going home with the best leftovers the city of New York had ever seen.
“Decided to stay for dinner again?” Sue called out toward you with a smile, giving Herbie a pat on the head as he worked away at carving a pumpkin. You shot her a smile in return, pouring yourself a quick glass of water before making your way toward Ben.
“Johnny asked…and I decided to be nice and oblige him,” you didn’t miss the teasing hum that Ben let out, lightly whacking him on his rocky shoulder. Not that it did you any good, hurting your hand more than it would ever hurt him. His laughter was ignored as your eyes lit up, catching sight of the familiar black and white cookies he was dumping onto a plate. “Oh my god, did you go grab these from Maisie’s?”
“Yes,” Ben waved your hand away when you went to reach for the cookies, producing another paper bag and sliding it your way. “These ones are yours.”
The smell that wafted from the bag was enough to have you almost moaning in the middle of the kitchen, eagerly digging one of the cookies out. Maisie’s famous snickerdoodle cookies, the perfect blend of cinnamon and sugar that you had adored since you were a little girl. One bite of the cookie had you in absolute heaven.
“Oh my god, I haven’t had these in ages!” Ben and Sue both laughed at your excitement as you took another bite of the warm cookie in your hand. “How did you know these were my favorites?”
Ben’s smirk wasn’t hard to miss at all.
“Oh, I didn’t. Johnny asked me to pick those up for you,”
It was probably time to accept that blushing around this family was the only thing you were capable of.
Sue’s laughter rang loudest as she rounded the island counter, high fiving Ben as she shot you a pointed look.
“You really have my brother wrapped around your finger without even trying, huh? You know, before I went to get scanned–again–in the lab, I stopped by the nursery to check out the crib progress. Heard a little The Wonder of You from down the hall, thought I’d peek in…”
The groan you emitted could probably be heard from the other side of the country, leaning down to barely bang your head against the countertop. Ben and Sue’s laughter rang through the air again as you looked up, desperately waving your hands.
“I swear, it wasn’t what it looked like-”
“What wasn’t what it looked like?”
Of course, Johnny chose to make his grand entrance at that moment. Thankfully for you, he’d changed out of that ridiculously hot button up. Unfortunately for you, he was still wearing those god forsaken white chinos.
“Your little dance Sue was telling me about earlier,” Ben teased, easily catching your hand as it came up to whack him again in his rough, oversized one. “What’s with the long face?”
“Oh that dance was exactly what it looked like. Thanks for coming to dinner though, sweetheart, glad you like the cookies,” Johnny tacked on a wink in your direction, one you affectionately rolled your eyes over, before his smile was back to a frown. “And what of it, Ben?”
“Sounds like your 2:15 with Reed didn’t go well. I’m sorry, pal,”
From across the room, you could see Johnny’s shoulders move in a huff of laughter as he clapped, bringing down the cabinet shelf that held the same box of cereal you had taken from him two weeks ago. You moved around the island counter, filming your cup with more water before standing opposite of Ben while Johnny made his way back over.
“Hey, I’m fine,” he spoke, though the edge in his words was clear as he did, coming to stand directly at your side. “I don’t mind or anything, it’s just, uh-”
“I hear you, pal. We’ll go to space again,”
“That’s what I was trying to tell him earlier,” you tacked on, bumping your hip with Johnny’s, who quickly did the same back to you.
That smile you adored was back in moments, though, as he dug his hand into the box and produced the action figure waiting inside: a miniature Johnny Storm. His bright grin was turned in your direction as he waved the toy toward you, his signature catchphrase from the cartoon–flame on–ringing through the air as Reed entered the room, greeting his wife by the dining room table.
“They captured my likeness so perfectly, don’t you think?” he quipped, activating the catchphrase once again as you rolled your eyes. “Do you still have the one I gave you a few months ago?”
“Yeah, buried in the junk drawer of my kitchen,”
Johnny feigned shock, pinching your side quickly as you squirmed away with a laugh.
“At least upgrade me to your bedside table so I can be with you while you sleep,” that stupid line was accented with another wink before Johnny thrust the toy in Ben’s face. “Come on, admit it’s cool.”
That catchphrase just kept repeating.
I’m Johnny Storm! Flame On!
Flame On!
Flame On!
Ben grabbed the toy from Johnny’s hand in seconds, crushing it to nothing but dust and blowing it back in Johnny’s face with a smirk. You tried everything to conceal your laughter, but it was inevitable.
“Flame off!”
Sirens rang outside the balcony of the building’s living room. The flying cars of the police force raced past, bathing the room in red and blue lights. The second they disappeared, another squadron flew past in the other direction, the sirens all intermixing in the air.
These were the moments you never got to see often, when the team sprung into action. It was clear in Johnny and Ben alone, how their silly little moment was forgotten as they thrust into action, prepared to go running out of the building into danger. Reed simply held up a hand, shaking his head at the group.
“No, no, it’s alright. This is me,”
Ben and Sue followed Reed out onto the balcony, but Johnny hung back, his gaze stuck on you as you hadn’t moved from the kitchen. He simply tilted his head toward his family, holding his hand out for you. Such a simple move that shouldn’t have kickstarted your heart into what was surely an irregular rhythm, but it did.
The second you were at his side, Johnny’s hand rested at the small of your back, fingers curling into the fabric of your shirt just so to tug you slightly closer to his side. Together, you stepped out onto the balcony of the Baxter Building beside Ben, overlooking New York as it was bathed in every corner in red and blue.
“For the past few months, I’ve been tracking a small number of criminal organizations throughout the city,”
You shot a look down at your boss, eyebrow raised.
“That’s what you’ve been doing in that notebook by your desk?” Reed simply waved your comment off, pointing just down the block, fairly close to the area in which your apartment resided.
“47 of them, to be exact. Including the Puppet Master in the Bowery, the Wizard in Gramercy Park, and Diablo in Washington Heights,”
Everyone on the balcony went quiet for a moment.
“You…baby-proofed the world,” Ben finally spoke. Sue’s sigh could be heard from the other end of the balcony as she tried to defend her husband.
“It’s a sweet gesture,”
“It’s a little insane,” you mumbled to yourself, just loud enough for you and Johnny to hear. The blonde at your side simply shrugged, glancing down at you and catching your gaze.
“It’s not totally crazy. He’s trying to protect the things he loves, what’s most precious to him…” Johnny’s lips quirked up just slightly. “I’d do it too…I’d do it for you.”
He said it so…so earnestly. With so much conviction in his tone, as if this was a certainty to him. That protecting not just his family, but you, was something he needed to do. That if it came down to it, he’d do it without a second thought.
“You…you have to stop saying things like that to me, Johnny,” you hated how breathless your voice came out, how wrecked you sounded as you whispered your response back to him, the conversation still droning on in the background between the other three.
The smile on Johnny’s face only widened, his hand slipping around from your lower back to your waist, as he gave you a light squeeze.
“Stop saying what, the truth?”
No, you need to stop saying things that are making me fall in love with you.
Love. That was a word that had only crossed your mind once when it came to Johnny Storm.
It was two years ago, a week to the day that you had lost your mother, your biggest supporter in life. You stood at that funeral, surrounded by estranged family members you hadn’t spoken to in years, and family friends who wept for your loss. Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny had come, offered their condolences, paid their respects.
When the others left, Johnny stayed. He stood by your side through the first viewing, never left it during the second viewing, and stood with you in the pouring rain an hour after they’d put her in the ground. You had cried, he held you, and he’d simply never left you alone that day. The colleague that had quickly become a friend, who flirted with you every chance he got, never uttered a single flirtatious comment that day. He’d simply been there, been the shoulder you needed.
That was the day you realized you may have fallen in love with the one man you told yourself not to fall in love with, and you buried those feelings in your heart for what you thought would be forever.
“Stuck in your head over there? Come on, it’s dinner time,”
Ben’s voice broke you from your stupor. The team had all started to make their way inside while you were left at the balcony railing, hands white knuckled on top of the rail.
Johnny’s hand was held out toward you, and you ignored every part of your brain that told you not to and slipped your hand into his, letting him pull you back in toward the living room.
That’s what their watches all went off, alerts blaring in sync with one another.
It was like a firework went off, a boom shattering the night air of the city. The clouds, the sky, were painted in gold, streaks of meteors and debris crossing the sky as they fell to the earth. The sound that emitted from the golden cloud that stretched across the sky, bathing the city in its light, felt…otherwordly. Like a scream, like a warning.
A warm hand enveloped your face, turning your wide eyes away from the scene.
There were very few times you saw Johnny as serious as he was now. Jaw locked, eyes narrowed but still soft as they looked at you, the cascades of gold shone over his face, highlighting his features as another boom sounded off in the distance.
“Go inside, don’t come out,”
Words were caught in your throat. All you could manage was a nod, his thumb doing a single swipe over your cheek, before he patted Reed on the shoulder and launched himself over the railing and into the air, igniting himself as he went.
If not for the moment, you would have stopped to admire him as he flew, bathed in the reds and oranges of his fire. You were awestruck every time you got to witness those cosmic powers firsthand.
Reed, Sue, and Ben had followed not long after, as you could hear the familiar whirled of their car through the air, chasing after Johnny through the city, following whatever had just appeared from the sky.
You? You sat on the living room couch, wringing your hands together to keep them from shaking. You’d been there as they had dealt with Red Ghost, or even Moleman, but this?
This was different. This was otherworldly. This was terrifying. And when Herbie flipped the switch of the television, rolling to your side, you were greeted with the sight of the silver alien woman hovering in Times Square for the first time.
“Your planet is now marked for death. Your world will be consumed by the devourer,”
Her voice sent a single chill down the column of your spine. Herbie’s robotic hand reached out for yours, ceasing the endless wringing of your hands together. You took it without hesitation, though you wished in your heart it was someone else’s hand holding yours in this moment.
“Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak. Use this time to rejoice, and celebrate, for your time is short. I herald his beginning…I herald your end…I herald, Galactus.”
And thus began the longest night of your life since the day your colleagues went into space and came back forever changed.
Sending the team into space was the only option, to confront this mystery at its source. Reed had given you the basics in passing: the threat was real, there was documentation of plants across the universe disappearing entirely, the chrome woman’s signature left on each of them. He’d tasked you to the launch team, to prepare Excelsior for launch in T-16 hours.
Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak.
Those words rattled around your brain the entire night, into the wee hours of the morning. Even as you helped Lynn set up the press conference, as you conferred with the launch team to ensure that the Excelsior was prepared in every conceivable way, as you checked and double-checked every data point throughout the entire ship, her words never left you.
Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak.
The anxiety was clawing at you, even as you threw yourself into work. The notion of what her words meant, of what could happen, of how close the end could be.
The clock read sometime around 2 a.m. when you had finally stepped foot in that guest room made for you. There was no way you were walking home tonight. Besides, come morning, there would still be too much to do, too many data points that needed to be checked, too many scenarios that would need to be run through to make sure your team came back to you.
You knew sleep wasn’t coming to you, though, not when that metallic voice was rattling around your head. Not when an alien threat was upending your life. Not when, two doors away, there was a man that you did, in fact, want to hold close…in case you never got the chance to again.
You loved him. All it took was the end of the world to admit it.
Clad in nothing but an old t-shirt with the 4 logo on the front, one you were sure was Johnny’s, and a pair of shorts, you didn’t care what you looked like as you tore out of the room and into the hallway. Not now, not when your world was being threatened, not when your entire life could be ripped from you in a matter of seconds.
Johnny was awake, just as you knew he would be. White shirt, plaid blue pants you’d seen him sleep in so many times, he stood in his dark room by the windows once more, watching the crews rush around on the ground as they prepared the ship for launch in just a few hours. That same record from earlier in the day was still playing.
I guess I'll never know the reason why you love me as you do. That's the wonder, the wonder of you.
With a step into the room, shutting the door behind you and flicking on the lamp just beside the door, Johnny finally met your eyes.
“I couldn’t sleep,” was the only thing you could manage to say. Johnny tilted his head, studying you silently, before he held out his hand just as he had done hours before.
“Come here,”
Crossing the room in a matter of moments, you all but fell into his arms. His outstretched hand ignored, he was frozen in place for just a moment as you curled your arms around his neck, throwing yourself into his arms. The faint smell of his cologne lingered, as did his bodywash, and the sigh you let out the second the smell hit you was in comfort.
It didn’t take Johnny long to unfreeze, his arms finding their place around your waist. One hand rested on your upper back, one pressing into your lower back. A faint kiss was placed to the side of your head, heat lingering for a second. Heat lingered in your entire body, radiating off of him in waves.
“You have to talk to me, baby,”
Talk? The truth was, you didn’t know where to start. How were you supposed to explain that, since the moment you had met Johnny Storm, your heart was already his. That in all your moments over the years, you’d fallen for the man you told yourself not to fall for. And as the threat from the metallic woman loomed over the world, as he prepared to try and save life as you knew it, the only thing you wanted was to be held by him. To know he was here, that he was okay, that he was with you.
“I-I’m scared,”
Those were the only words you could settle on. Johnny pulled back, his hands sliding gently around the fabric of the shirt hanging loosely from your body until they reached your face. He cradled you, so softly and gently in his hands, it was almost involuntary the way you closed your eyes and leaned into his touch, his warmth, chasing the feeling of security it brought you.
“It’s okay to be,” the gentle tone in his voice washed over you, covering you like a blanket. It’s exactly how he had spoken to you that day, standing in the rain when you refused to leave your mother’s side, reassuring you he was there. “I don’t care what the herald said, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You know that, right?”
Of course you knew that. If there was anything you knew for certain in this world, it was that when Johnny Storm said he’d protect you, he meant it. He’d spent long enough proving that to you.
There was no hesitation on your part when you laid your own hands overtop of his. Fingers curling around them, tugging his right hand just barely from your cheek, you turned and pressed the lightest of kisses to the palm of his hand.
Johnny froze. You could feel it. The slight tilt of his head, the questioning look that flickered across his face in the moonlight that shone through the windows. It was all fair. You were never the one to cross the boundary like this, to make a move such as this.
“I can’t stop thinking about what she said,” was how you tried to explain yourself, stopping and starting your sentence over and over as you tried to find the right way to explain yourself, the walls crumbling and the floodgates bursting wide open. “Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak…it’s why I came to you.”
A single emotion crossed Johnny’s face in seconds: understanding.
That signature smirk of his was back in moments, even if it was twinged with a softness reserved only for you. The heat left your cheeks, but found your hands as Johnny’s fingers intertwined with yours, hanging your joined hands down between you both. There was a bright light that passed over the window for just a moment, bathing the two of you in bright light, before you were plunged back into the darkness of his room yet again.
“You did come to me…why’s that?”
“You know why-”
“I do,” he said it so matter-of-factly, that smirk growing just a tad as he leaned into your personal bubble by just a hair. “This push and pull, four years of ‘will they’ or ‘won’t they.’ I want to hear you say it, baby.”
“It’s not that easy,” you immediately shook your head, teeth gnawing at your bottom lip as Johnny simply watched you. “Saying it…makes it real.”
He scoffed, the sound mixed with laughter, as his head cocked slightly more to the side.
“You came into my bedroom at 2 in the morning–wearing my shirt, might I add–is that not real enough?”
“When you’ve spent years trying to ignore how you feel and refusing to say it, it’s not that easy to say,” you desperately tried to explain. “If I say it…then everything changes.”
Johnny took barely another step forward, and you almost wanted to step back, to bring back the space between you and preserve the small, crumbling wall that still stood between you both.
“A sexy, naked alien woman came to earth and basically prophesied our demise, darling. If there was ever a time to ‘change everything’ and lay it all on the line, I think it’s now,”
Your heart wanted to hang onto the word darling, but your brain was too stuck on the ‘sexy, naked alien woman’ part of his sentence. The sigh that escaped you was instantaneous, as well as the frown, as you shot the blonde man a pointed look.
“Sexy, naked alien woman, Johnny? Seriously?”
“Come on! She was–objectively–attractive. You can’t deny that!”
It was your turn to scoff, tearing your hands from his in a heartbeat, before spinning on your heel. You felt like an idiot–on the precipice of finally confessing your deepest, darkest secret you’d kept locked away for years, and this is what you got.
“I try to be serious with you, Johnny, and you turn it into a joke once again-”
You didn’t get far from him. A hand enveloped your upper arm mid sentence, tugging and spinning your back around. A gasp fell from your lips as you collided with the chest of the man before you.
Whatever you were going to say never saw the light of day. Not when Johnny Storm gripped at your hips, tugged you as impossibly close as he could, and finally–finally–kissed you.
The kiss you’d dreamed about for four years, finally yours.
Johnny’s lips were soft as they slanted against your own, enveloping you in his warmth. They moved against you in a steady rhythm, passionate but still gentle, still testing the waters of the line you had never crossed before.
His hands curled into the fabric of the t-shirt clinging to your body, pushing it up just enough so that his hands could dip underneath. Your breath caught, even as his lips continued to move against yours, as his heated skin made contact with yours, and any part of your brain begging you to stop this was silenced as you melted into him.
Hands landed on his broad chest, gripping the fabric as you let him mold your body to his, the scent of his bodywash enveloping you as your body almost became one with him. In the pits of your stomach, as those heated hands trailed up your waist and ghosted over your ribcage, another flurry of butterflies erupted as a moan slipped past your lips, swallowed by his mouth.
A moan left Johnny’s lips at the sound of your own, one hand leaving your waist to curl around the back of your neck. Those slender fingers buried themselves into your hair, gripping just enough to have another groan of pleasure tumbling from your lips, as he guided your mouth against his own.
“You can’t keep making little noises like that,” his mouth barely left yours as he spoke, lips moving against yours, as he dove back in for another kiss the second he was done speaking.
“Your fault,” was all you could manage out, trying to back away just enough to speak, but Johnny never let your lips go far. Your hands glided up his chest, his neck, curling into his short hair as your thumb crested the ridge of his ear. “I’m trying to be mad at you.”
“Be mad at me later,” was his immediate response, his lips leaving yours just to find their place along your jawline and slide down into the hollow of your neck. His tongue danced its way across your skin, leaving tingles of electricity everywhere he touched you, his words murmured into your neck as he buried himself there. “I’m trying to kiss you.”
There was some part of you that wanted to protest him–over what, you weren’t even sure at this point–but you couldn’t. Not when his teeth dug just so into the side of your neck, leaving his mark on your skin as if he was claiming you as his.
You were always his.
“You c-called–oh god–you called the alien sexy while I was trying to confess,” you just barely managed to get the words out through your moans. Johnny was slowly walking you backward, straight in the direction of his bed while his lips never left the side of your neck, leaving his mark on every inch of skin he could see.
Your foot caught on the raised edge of the platform his seating area sat on, your feet stumbling backward. Johnny was there–he was always there–and tugged you back into him. And god, if you loved those blue eyes before, you loved them even more now: pupils blown wide, Johnny Storm looked about as wrecked as you felt.
“Your confession was four years late, and I’m impatient,” he stole another kiss from you, his teeth sinking just barely into your bottom lip, tugging gently. He let go, pressing a messy kiss to your lips to soothe the pain of his bite, words fanning out over your lips. “I’ve been trying to tell you I’m in love with you for four years now, so please just shut up and let me show you instead. Now–jump.”
At this point, you’d do just about anything he asked of you.
Johnny caught you with ease, both of his hands splayed out across the bare skin of your thighs, locking your legs around his hips. A choked moan fell from your lips the second your core was dragged against the painfully hard length bulging against his own pants, hands curling into his hair as you, this time, desperately pulled him into a kiss.
I’m in love with you. Those words repeated like a mantra in your head. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, the world’s fire boy and hero that they painted like a sex symbol. The ‘playboy’ with a new girl all the time, never able to hold down a girl…was in love with you.
Your back hit the bed, body bouncing just slightly before settling. His eyes never left you as you crawled back just slightly, propping yourself up on your elbows to look up at him in the dark of the room, lit only by sky and the lamp by the door. The music played faintly in the background, but at this moment, it meant nothing to you.
Johnny’s hands gently touched your knees from where they dangled off the edge of the bed, parting them just so in order to step between them. You watched, entranced by every move he made, body flushed from the heat that coursed through your bare skin at the slightest of touches from him. With a practiced ease, his hand took hold of the back of his shirt, yanking it over his head without hesitation. It found a place to lay somewhere across the room, discarded until the following morning.
It was impossible not to stare. His broad chest, those biceps that always threatened to bulge out of every shirt he wore. His toned abdomen and the trail of hair that led straight to the waistband of his pants, the outline of him still prevalent and straining against the fabric.
“I need to know that you’re sure…about this,” you weren’t used to it, the vulnerability in Johnny’s tone. He leaned over you now, hands splayed across the bed on either side of you, barely a few inches from your face. Those blue eyes flickered down to your lips time and time again. “Because if I kiss you again, I’m not stopping until you’re mine.”
There was no hesitation on your part. Just a single movement of your arms, tossing the old shirt hanging from your upper body across the room to join his. As simple as that, you sat bare before him, chest heaving with every deep breath you took in.
“I was already yours. I always have been,” there was only certainty in your tone as you held his gaze. “Speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak…that’s why I came to you. Because if this is the end of the world, I needed you to know that I love-”
He didn’t let you finish your words. His next kiss was anything but gentle.
Messy, spit coating your lips as Johnny’s tongue seemed to invade your mouth and every one of your senses, his lips devoured yours as if you were his first meal in decades. He kissed with the hunger of a starved man, his hands grasping at every part of your skin they could–your waist, your hip, before finally your ass. The squeeze he gave to your skin, the uptick in heat you felt as if he was burning himself just slightly hotter on purpose, had another moan tumbling from your lips and into his mouth.
The hand still gripping your ass tugged you upward on the bed until your head fell against the silk pillows at the headboard. Your hands never left Johnny’s hair, carding through the strands as you frantically kissed him back, addicted to the feeling, as his hips ground into yours. That bulge in his pants pressed heavenly into your core, the friction rolling your eyes into the back of your head as you let your head fall to the pillows with a moan.
Johnny’s lips were everywhere. From your jawline, to your neck, until they finally reached your collarbone. He lavished you with his lips, tongue running over your skin as his hands trailed up the sides of your lower abdomen, stopping just as they reached the swell of your breasts.
“Since the day you walked in, I’ve thought about this,” his voice was raspy, the words barely understood as they were spoken against your skin. “Since the moment Reed introduced you to us.”
“I-I was wearing a lab coat,” you choked on your words as Johnny’s lips reached your sternum, trailing kissing down your chest, but never where you wanted him. “Hardly sexy, I’d argue.”
“It is when I’m picturing you in that coat and your heels, and nothing else,” he tacked on, before his lips wrapped around your nipple without warning.
You mewled at the sudden contact, one hand returning to his hair on instinct as your back arched off the bed and into him. Johnny’s hand on your abdomen was quick to push you back down, holding you down against the bedding beneath you.
God, with the fire that felt like it was burning through your body, you could’ve sworn that Johnny had caught you on fire. His teeth just barely grazed the sensitive bud in his mouth, a sharp intake of breath leaving your lips on instinct. He was quick to soothe you, tongue swirling around the erect and sensitive bud with rapt attention. A moan slipped through him, felt through your entire body, as your other hand tore into the bedding. Desperate for something to hold onto. Something to ground you in your pleasure.
“I’ve dreamed about you under me. Kissing you, tasting you, loving you,” his practically purred out every single word, tongue flicking back and forth over your sensitive nipple. He moved to the other one easily, delivering the same rapt attention to it.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” you relented, divulging every secret you held dear to the man who lavished every inch of you in love and adoration. “In the kitchen, the lab, in that stupid button up from earlier-”
“I knew you liked that shirt. Wore it just for you,” his husky tone sent another shot of pleasure through you, heat curling through every inch of your body.
The tips of his fingers trailed lightly down your stomach. When Johnny’s head lifted for just a moment to lock his eyes with yours, that familiar smirk on his face, you weren’t given a second to react before heat poured through his touch.
Gasps mixed with moans of pleasure fell from your lips on instinct, that unnatural heat of his pouring through his touch and into your skin. Every movement of his fingers over your ribcage and down your abdomen felt as if it was leaving your skin on fire, branding his touch into your skin so that you would never forget the feeling. Burning him into your memory so that you would always feel the phantom sensations of his touch on your skin.
“You’re absolute perfection, you always have been,” Johnny moaned into your skin, lips trailing over the mounds of your breasts with another series of a thousand kisses. Those heated fingers dipped past the waistband of your shorts, pressing directly against your clothed clit without a warning. The moan you let escape mixed in the air with the moan that tumbled from Johnny’s lips against your skin. “Jesus Christ, baby, you’re so soaked.”
The heat was still there in his fingers, setting off every little nerve ending in you even through the soaked fabric of your panties that you desperately wanted gone. Your hips ground up into his hand, whimpers falling from your lips as you chased after the feeling of him, desperate for friction.
“All for you,” even this hint of pleasure had you stumbling toward the edge, babbling almost incoherently. With a tug to his hair, you were quick to bring Johnny’s lips back to yours, arms wound around his neck. He gave into your needs immediately, devouring you in a kiss as heated as his touch was, fingers rubbing slow circles over where you needed him so desperately. “Please–Johnny, please! Please, I need you. Need you–need you so bad.”
“I got you, baby. I got you. Keep moaning my name like that, and I’ll give you the world”
Those whispered words stayed on your lips, lingering, as Johnny left you. His touch wasn’t gone long. Fingers curling into your shorts, they were discarded across the room in a flash, panties gone with them as well.
For the first time, you laid completely bare in front of the man you loved–the man you denied loving for so long. And Johnny Storm was a mess. His hair stuck up in multiple directions, skin flushed, but he was still beautiful. The most beautiful man you’d ever met, inside and out.
Johnny didn’t give you a second to truly breathe once he was done admiring you. He sprawled out along the end of the bed, head dipping between your thighs, as he licked a single stripe with his flattened tongue directly up your center.
“Fucking beautiful, and all mine,” his words were growled into your core, two fingers lazily moving between your folds and spreading every ounce of wetness around, holding you open so he could see every inch of you. “Sweeter than I ever dreamed you could be.”
He dove into you like you were the only thing that mattered. Fingers spreading you open, giving him access to every square inch, his mouth devoured you. A cool drink of water for a starving man in the middle of the desert. Johnny moved his tongue with precise expertise, as if he knew exactly what your body craved.
Delving into you, flicking back and forth as he drank in every secretion of arousal that dripped from you. That same tongue dragged its way up to your clit, swirling around in figure eights, flicking back and forth.
Cries fell from your lips wantonly, hands digging into his hair. Eyes fluttered shut, head tilted back to the ceiling, there was only one word you could repeat over and over again: Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.
His name was all you knew anymore, too lost in your own bliss and pleasure.
In one fell swoop, your thighs were settled over his shoulders, before his head was back where you wanted it more than anything. His lips and tongue focused on your clit, still swirling back and forth, as his fingers dipped slightly lower, dancing right across your opening.
It started with one long, slender finger sliding into you. One of your hands was forced to leave Johnny’s hair, falling over your own mouth to try and conceal the cry that threatened to burst from you, afraid that the others would hear you.
“Let me hear you, baby,” he laughed against your core, his finger curling just perfectly against your walls as they clenched around him every time he dragged his finger back and forth. “Want to hear you.”
“Don’t want to–fucking hell, Johnny–let the others hear,”
“Let them. Let them hear me love you,”
Fuck Johnny Storm and his stupid lines. His stupid dirty talk that had your walls clenching around him again and again.
Another finger joined the first, followed by another, before you were stretched as wide as you could be around Johnny. The squelch of your juices rung through the air with every move of his fingers–dragging so deliciously into you, curling up, before dragging out just to the edge of your opening. His mouth–god, his mouth–never let up, lapping away at your core like it was his job, what he was meant to do.
That coil of pleasure deep within your lower body came out of nowhere, sneaking up on you just like your love for this man had.
“Johnny–baby–I can’t. I can’t–I’m gonna-”
“Let go, darling,” came that growl in his voice again, the speed of his fingers increasing. “I got you baby, let go.”
That coil snapped in seconds after he spoke. The precipice of your orgasm was earth-shattering, like you’d never felt before. Like trails of fire through your veins, the pleasure coursing through you had your head buried into the pillow behind your head, desperately trying to conceal the wails of pleasure that tumbled from your lips. Your thighs snapped shut around Johnny’s head, but his ministrations never let up as he eagerly drank up every bit of your arousal that leaked from you.
The come down was slow, like waking up. Your breath was uneven, heart beating erratically when you finally pulled your head from the pillow. Eyes bleary, it took a moment to blink them back to life.
Johnny stood at the edge of the bed, discarding his pants and boxers to the pile of clothing littering the other side of the room. And even in your fucked-out, blissful state, one look at him for the first time had that burning desire coursing back through your veins.
He was big. There was no way around it, no denying it, no other way to put it. Flushed, hanging with that beautiful reddened tip, one large and prominent vein throbbing along the edge of it. Beads of precum collected at the tip, his hand smearing it down along his length as he gave himself one single pump before he was crawling back onto the bed.
Johnny knelt between your legs again. Even with limbs that felt like Jell-O, you met him halfway, dragging yourself into a seated position. It was the smile on his face right now, the one erupting those butterflies once more, that you decided was your favorite: soft, adoring, loving.
It was your hands that cupped his cheeks, bringing him into a soft kiss. The taste of you lingered on his lips, sweet just like he said. You poured every ounce of emotion into your kiss, trying to convey to him the years you’d spent loving him so quietly that you couldn’t admit it.
“I might be addicted to you, Johnny Storm,” your words were mumbled into his lips. He laughed so gently, stealing another peck.
“Glad you finally caught up with me, princess, I’ve been addicted since day one,”
Pressed to him, his lips stealing a thousand pecks from yours, the lust in your bones was back in full force. All you could do was hum in response, one of your hands trailing down his chest, nails dragging slowly over his abdomen, before you finally took his throbbing cock in your hand.
He felt even bigger than he looked, which didn’t even make sense in your mind. But he was hot, the skin searing into your hand in the best way. You gave him one squeeze, one tug, and you smiled at the hitch in his breath. The twitch of his cock in your hold.
Johnny’s hand quickly grabbed yours, though, unlatching it from him. All you could do was shake your head, practically whining as you tried to take your hand back.
“Johnny-”
“God, it’s so hot how eager you are to touch me,” he laughed again, tilting his head to leave a single kiss to the column of your throat. “This is about you, doll. Save that for next time. It can be a ‘welcome home from space’ gift for me. A ‘thanks for saving the world’ gift, if you will.”
Space.
That word was enough to have your next words caught in your throat as the weight of everything came crashing back down on you. The threat, the herald, the space launch commencing in a matter of hours now, the events that brought you here in the first place.
You weren’t sure when you started crying, when a single tear slipped down your cheek, but Johnny caught it. Eyes full of concern, but understanding, he simply wiped the tears from your cheek, laying a kiss to the wet splotch of your skin.
“No crying, none of that. Just lay back, baby,”
You listened, letting his hands guide you gently to rest back against the pillows once more. Parting your legs, Johnny placed himself between them, holding himself up over your body on his forearms. Right where he belonged.
Your hands rested on his chest, sliding up so gently to his neck. His eyes never left yours, his length sitting right against your soaked and sensitive core, gliding back and forth with each gentle twitch of his hips.
“You didn’t let me say it earlier. So let me say it, for the first time outloud,” you gave him a watery smile, lips quivering as you looked up at him. “I love you, Johnny Storm. I’ve loved you for so long. I’m sorry it took the world maybe ending for this, that I didn’t let myself be yours sooner.
He smiled, that same charming smile he always did, as he rolled his hips once more. His cock caught just along the edge of your opening as Johnny dipped down, breath fanning over your lips.
“Like you said: you’ve always been mine,”
The first press of his length into your core stung. As wet as you were, as prepared as you were for him, it had been so long. He stretched your walls little by little, taking his time as your body adjusted to him. Then, inch by inch, he sunk within your walls that clung to him tightly.
His cock bottomed out, sunk fully within you, bare hips pressed to bare hips as you both let out shaky breaths. Your nails dug into the hair at the nape of his neck while his hands trailed up your ribcage, squeezing every moment or so as choked out moans fell from his lips.
“God–so tight for me, baby–you feel like heaven,”
His name was the only thing you could manage to choke out between your moans as he dragged himself back to the tip, before burying himself again to the hilt. Your moans, your cries and the way your hands threaded into his hair only spurred him on more, Johnny’s hips snapping into yours again and again and again.
His lips found yours amidst every snap of his hips, every drag of his cock against your walls. Every moan that slipped through your lips was drowned out by him, by the feverish movements of his lips against yours. They trailed away, back to your neck, leaving a trail of saliva connecting you together as he bit another love bite into the side of your neck. It didn’t matter to you how this would look to others, how scandalous you might look in the light of day to others.
All that mattered was Johnny Storm.
“Oh god, Johnny!” your head fell to his shoulder, teeth sinking into his skin as his hips snapped against yours over and over, driving him deeper with every thrust into you. “Holy fuck, w-why weren’t we doing this for years?”
“Because you’ve been a stubborn–fuck–little tease all these years,” his tongue dragged up the column of your throat, peppering kissing up and down your skin as his cock dragged against your walls. “Bent over your workstation in the lab–oh god–you don’t know how many times I’ve thought about it. Thought about walking in and taking you right there, making a mess right at your desk.”
“R-Reed would walk in and you’d scar him for life,”
“Sounds like a win-win to me,” there was shared laughter, punctuated with a shared moan as his cock dragged right against that spot nestled within you. “And try not to talk about my brother-in-law when I’m fucking you.”
There was no time to reply as Johnny scooped up your wrists in his hand in a single motion, pinning them down above your head. He adjusted your waist, suddenly driving into you at a new angle that had you mewling his name all over again.
Johnny whispered your name into your skin with every kiss, timed just so with every snap of his hips against yours. That coil of heat was burning, wounding itself tighter and tighter for the second time that night. All you could feel was him, was Johnny.
His warmth, the heat that burned off of him. It warmed your skin, it had beads of sweat dripping down your forehead. It was uncomfortable in the best way. His one hand still trailed up and down your ribcage, every so often tweaking your sensitive nipple between his thumb and index finger and coaxing another moan of pleasure from you.
He worshiped you, every inch of you, like you were the greatest thing to ever grace the earth. To him, you might have been
“Fucking perfect, baby. Fucking made for me,” his lips found yours again, slick with spit as his tongue dipped into your mouth to taste every inch of you possible.
His stroke faltered, the rhythm uneven, and you knew he was close. That coil of heat in your stomach was threatening to snap any second every time his cock pulsed and throbbed within your walls. His grip on your wrists was tight, even as you struggled against him, desperate to just hold him.
“Johnny–baby–please I-I’m so close-”
You choked on your words once more, the hand still trailing across your stomach heating up again, leaving a burning trail of heat in your skin. Those heated fingers found your clit like it was second nature, a cry of pure pleasure leaving your lips as they circle that bundle of a thousand nerves over and over again, hips still snapping into you as quickly and desperately as they can.
“Let go,” his voice was husky, eyes blown wide as he looked down at you. Your wrists were finally let go, your hands immediately finding their place in the strands of his hair again as his free hand cups the back of your neck, smashing your lips into his in a flurry of moans. “Let go, baby, let go.”
Your second climax burned hotter than the first.
The pleasure burned so hot, so bright, you were practically sobbing, every cry and moan of pure bliss muffled by his kiss. Your legs locked around Johnny’s waist–tightly–so tight he could barely move away from you. It was overwhelming, the shockwaves of bliss that ran through your veins, the shaking of your thighs as you held onto his hair like it’s a lifeline.
He ground himself into you over and over, rhythm so far gone he was struggling. But all it took was your lips lazily finding his neck, teeth sinking in to leave your matching mark to his, for his hips to still as he spilt into you.
Johnny breathed out every moan into the side of your head, your name tumbling from his lips along with a flurry of swears. The grip he had on your hip was bruising, so tight you think he could snap the damn bone if he held any tighter. And his cock? Seated so deeply inside of you it’s as if you are one, heat pooled within your lower abdomen with every wave of cum that filled you to the brim.
On the other side of the room, the record was still playing softly. Bright lights still flashed by the windows every so often, crews still at work on the spaceship set for launch by mid-morning.
None of it mattered in the silence of the bed.
You aren’t sure how long either of you laid there. Your heartbeat, eventually, returned to normal, even as your chest still heaved to take in every breath that it could. Johnny still laid half on top of you, pressing repeated kisses to the side of your head, but said nothing. Your hand stayed in his hair, carding through it, as your core pulsed. It would ache come morning–hell, it already did–but it was worth it. It was so worth it.
Neither of you were quite sure when he pulled out of you, or how long you simply laid there and basked in the afterglow of a moment that should’ve happened years ago.
Eventually, Johnny shifted down. His lips trailed down your body in worship, like they’d done already that night. From your cheek, to your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breasts, and down your lower abdomen.
“Careful…not sure I’d survive a round three,” your voice was hoarse, mouth dry. Johnny laughed against your skin, still kissing every inch he could see.
“I don’t think I would, either,”
His hands were heated once more, but not for the same purpose as moments before. Now, his touch was gentle, massaging every piece of you that he could get his hands on. His thumbs rubbed into your wrists, your waist, and your hips, digging into the muscles. A sigh escaped you at the comforting feeling, taut muscles loosening at the feeling of the heat and the movement of his hands.
With every kiss pressed to your skin, you could feel it: Johnny was humming. It didn’t take long to know which song he was humming, which lyrics: that same song once again.
I guess I'll never know the reason why, you love me as you do. That's the wonder, the wonder of you.
“Is that our song now?” you laughed, even if your heart was clenching at the mere thought. The mere idea of that song belonging to the two of you–the idea that Johnny Storm belonged to you.
You could feel his smile against your abdomen as he spoke. “It should be. It’s accurate. Because I don’t ever think I’ll get over the miracle that is you…loving me.”
It’s not a miracle. What you really want to tell him is that falling in love with him was so easy, you barely realized you had done it. It might be the easiest thing you’ve ever done.
Johnny crawled back up your body, slotting himself onto the bed beside you, before tugging you in. There’s no hesitation on your part, simply curling into his side with your head over his chest and arm slung around his waist. Words aren’t needed in the silence, not when you’ve both clearly laid everything out on the table now. Instead, you just listened to the beat of his heart, the natural rhythm that lulls you into a state of peacefulness.
He’s yours. Johnny Storm is yours. He’s always been yours, you just didn’t know it.
He pressed a kiss to your forehead, hand cradling the back of your head as he said his next words confidently.
“We’re going to go up there tomorrow, and we’re going to stop this guy. We’re going to protect this Earth, like we’ve sworn to do. But me? I’m going to do it so I can come home to you, and love you for the rest of my life. I promise,”
He can’t promise that, you knew he couldn’t. There was no telling what might happen when that ship took off tomorrow, what they might encounter, or who this Galactus really was.
But Johnny Storm loved you. For now, in the quiet of the night, just between the two of you, that’s enough.
✮ synopsis: six months. that's how long it takes for you to realize love isn't enough. six months of bucky sleeping on the couch, of missed anniversaries and empty drawers where his things should be. six months of being loved by someone who treats you like you're already a ghost.
✮ pairing: post-thunderbolts!bucky x fem!reader
✮ disclaimers (18+): heavy angst, toxic relationship dynamics, emotional manipulation (unintentional), alcohol use/intoxication, unwanted touching (from minor character), violence, ptsd and trauma responses, therapy avoidance, communication breakdown, emotional neglect, mild sexual content (minors dni), depression, co-dependency, anxiety, self-destructive behaviors
✮ word count: 14.7k (woof)
✮ a/n: ANGST CITY BABY. but this is part one of a two-part series and i p r o m i s e (promise promise) there's a happy ending on the horizon. but i've gotta drag everyone through the emotional trenches first 🤠
(also the text messages keep formatting all wonky and i've given up trying to fix them. sry.)
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The candle wax had started pooling at the base, creating small rivers that threatened to spill onto the tablecloth your grandmother gave you. You'd been watching it for the past twenty minutes, cataloging its slow destruction while the roast chicken developed a skin that could probably deflect bullets.
Which, given who you were waiting for, felt grimly appropriate.
Your bare feet had gone numb against the kitchen tile, a bone-deep cold that crept up through your ankles. The dress—the one that made you feel like you could conquer an imaginary boardroom and bar fights with equal efficiency—now clung uncomfortably to your ribs, each breath a reminder of how long you'd been sitting here, waiting. Your stomach had given up growling an hour ago, resigned to its empty fate.
Six months. The number sat heavy behind your sternum, a weight that pressed against your lungs with each inhale. You'd moved in together at three months—a decision that had felt like destiny at the time. His toothbrush next to yours. His combat boots by your rain boots. His leather jacket slowly accumulating the smell of your perfume.
It had seemed romantic then, this swift collision of lives. Now the apartment felt like a beautiful prison you'd both walked into willingly, locking the door behind you.
The wine had gone warm in your glass, taking on that sickly sweet quality that made your teeth ache. You'd stopped drinking after the second one, some optimistic part of you still believing he'd walk through the door in time to share the bottle. That same part of you had carefully wrapped the small gift sitting on the coffee table—nothing major, just something that had made you think of him. A leather journal, worn and vintage, the kind he always touched in antique shops but never bought. You'd written something inside it this morning, when hope still felt like a reasonable emotion.
Your phone sat dark beside your plate. No messages. No missed calls. The silence of it felt accusatory, like even the device had given up on pretending this was normal.
When the key finally scraped in the lock, your spine straightened involuntarily, vertebrae clicking back into alignment after hours of slumping. Your heart kicked up its rhythm, that Pavlovian response to his arrival you hadn't managed to train out of yourself yet. Even now, even angry and hurt and tired, your body betrayed you with its eagerness.
Bucky filled the doorway like he always did—not just with his physical presence but with that particular gravity that made rooms reorganize themselves around him. Exhaustion hung on him like a second skin, in the slope of his shoulders and the way he held his head. His shoulders carried that specific tension that meant the mission had gone sideways, muscles bunched under his jacket like he was still ready to fight. The cut on his cheek was fresh, still weeping slightly, and his tactical pants bore smears of something dark that could be mud or blood or both.
He stopped mid-step, keys still dangling from his flesh hand. His eyes—that impossible blue that still made your stomach flip traitorously—tracked from your face to the dress to the table set for two. The wine bottle. The wilted salad. The candles drowning in their own wax.
You watched the exact moment comprehension hit him. His pupils dilated slightly, jaw going slack before tightening again. The keys landed in the bowl with more force than necessary, the sound sharp in the quiet apartment.
"Shit." The word came out raw, scraped from somewhere deep in his chest. "Sweetheart, I—"
"It's fine." The words jumped out before he could finish, your voice pitched just high enough to sound almost believable. Already you were moving, hands reaching for plates like this was all part of the plan. The ceramic was cool under your fingers, grounding you. "You're here now. Are you hungry? I can reheat—"
"Don't." His voice cut through your bustling, low and rough like gravel. When you looked back, he hadn't moved from the entryway, just stood there like he was cataloging damage from a bomb he'd accidentally detonated. One hand braced against the doorframe, knuckles white.
"Really, it's nothing." You turned back to the table, focusing on the simple task of stacking dishes. Your hands stayed steady even as something hot and tight crawled up your throat. "I made too much anyway. You know me, always overestimating portions."
"What time did I say?" The question came out carefully neutral, but you'd learned to read the microscopic changes in his voice. The slight rasp that meant self-hatred was creeping in.
"Seven-ish?" You kept your tone light, breezy, the voice you used when pretending everything was fine during your mother's phone calls. "But honestly, I should have checked. I know how these things go."
"It's nine." He said it like he was confessing to a crime. "Nine oh seven."
"Bucky, really—"
You glanced at him, saw something shift in his expression as he took in the scene again. His eyes moved from the table to you, cataloging details with that sniper's precision that never quite turned off. The dress. Your bare feet. The careful way you'd done your hair. Then his gaze caught on something over your shoulder, snagging like fabric on a nail.
The coffee table.
His whole body went rigid, that predator stillness that meant his brain was processing a threat. Except the threat was a small wrapped package, sitting innocent and damning in the lamplight.
Your stomach dropped somewhere around your knees.
"What—" he started, voice strangled.
"Oh, that's nothing." The words tumbled out too fast as you moved, scooping up the gift before he could step closer. The paper crinkled under your grip, and you fought the urge to crush it completely. "Just something I saw. Picked up. Seriously, not important."
His face went pale—not the gradual drain of color but an instant bleaching that made him look hollow, ghostlike. The cut on his cheek, half-healed and forgotten until now, stood out angry and red against his bloodless skin. You watched him piece it together in real time, could actually see the moment understanding clicked behind his eyes.
His left hand—the metal one—betrayed him first. The plates shifted and recalibrated with soft mechanical whispers, the way they always did when his emotions ran too hot, too fast for his body to process. A tell he'd never managed to suppress.
His gaze drifted past you, landing on that stupid Seinfeld calendar stuck to the fridge. The one he'd bought you three months ago, cackling like an idiot in the checkout line about how George Costanza somehow perfectly captured your shared existential dread. It hung there between old takeout menus and photo booth strips from better days, garish and wonderful and so utterly them that it hurt to look at.
You watched him stare at it, watched him count backwards in his head. Watched the last piece slot into place.
"It’s today," he said slowly, like he was defusing a bomb. Like the words might explode if he said them too fast. "It's—fuck." The profanity came out as barely more than a breath. "Fuck. Six months."
"It's really not a big deal." You were already shoving the gift into the nearest drawer, the wood protesting as you forced it shut. Your chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped steel bands around your ribs and was slowly tightening them. "Just a random Tuesday, you know? I mean, who even counts months? That's so high school."
"You made dinner." His voice had gone hollow, echoing strangely in the small space. Each word seemed to cost him something. "You got dressed up. You bought—"
"I like cooking." The words came out too fast, too bright, like shattered glass catching light. Your smile felt like it might crack your face. "And this dress is comfortable, I wear it all the time. You probably just haven't noticed because you're—anyway, should I heat up the chicken? You must be starving."
"Stop."
The word came out rough, almost angry, but when you looked at him, you could see all that fury turned inward. His flesh hand was clenched into a fist so tight you could hear his knuckles pop. The metal one hung carefully still at his side, like he didn't trust it. Didn't trust himself.
"Just—stop pretending this is okay."
"But it is okay." You forced the smile wider, until your cheeks ached with it. The expression you'd perfected after months of practice. "I understand. Your work is important. The world needs saving. What's a dinner compared to that?"
Something shifted in his expression—frustration bleeding into something that looked almost like disappointment. His jaw worked like he was chewing on words, trying to find the right ones. You recognized that look. It was the same one he got when he wanted you to yell at him, to throw something, to be anything other than understanding.
But you couldn't give him that. Wouldn't. Because if you started letting the hurt show, you might never stop. The dam would break, and you'd drown both of you in the flood.
"I forgot our anniversary." He said it flatly, like stating evidence at a trial. Like maybe if he said it out loud, it would hurt less. It didn't.
"It's just a day." You busied yourself with clearing plates, needing the physical action to keep yourself anchored. The fork clinked against china, a tinny sound that made you wince. "We're together every day. That's what matters, right?"
"You don't believe that."
"Sure I do." Another lie, smooth as silk. You'd gotten good at them. Had to, living like this. "Besides, when you think about it, anniversaries are kind of arbitrary. Why six months and not seven? Why celebrate time at all when—"
"What was in the box?"
He'd moved closer while you rambled, silent as always. Ghost-quiet, they probably called it in his files. Now he stood between you and the kitchen, blocking your escape with his body. This close, you could smell the mission on him—cordite and copper and something acrid that might have been burning plastic.
"Nothing important. Just… something that made me think of you." You shrugged, aiming for casual and landing somewhere around manic. Your hands fluttered like birds with broken wings. "But honestly, it's stupid. You probably wouldn't even—"
"Show me."
"Bucky—"
"Please." The word caught you off guard, soft and desperate. It hit you in the solar plexus, knocked the air from your lungs. "Just... let me see what you got me."
You could have refused. Should have, maybe. Instead, you found yourself retrieving the small package, the drawer sticking slightly as you pulled it open again. Your hands trembled as you held it out, and you hated them for the betrayal.
He took it carefully, like it might explode. Or like it was precious. The same way he'd touched you, in the beginning, before he'd learned you wouldn't break. The paper fell away with careful movements of his flesh hand, the metal one still hanging useless at his side.
The journal revealed itself slowly—leather worn soft with age, the color of whiskey in low light. You'd seen him run his fingers over similar ones a dozen times in antique shops, always putting them back with a small shake of his head. Like he didn't deserve nice things. Like he couldn't allow himself even that small pleasure.
"I thought—" Your voice caught, and you had to swallow hard to continue. "You're always writing on those loose papers, and they get everywhere, and I thought maybe—but it's dumb. You probably prefer the papers. It's not—"
"It's perfect." His voice came out raw, scraped. Like the words hurt coming up.
He opened it with careful fingers, found the note you'd tucked into the first page. You watched his eyes track over your handwriting, watched his jaw tighten with each word. You'd written it last night, three glasses of wine deep and feeling sentimental. Something about how his stories deserved a better home than scattered napkins and receipt backs. Something about being grateful for every day, even the difficult ones.
Now it felt like evidence of your naivety.
"It's really not," you said quickly, the words tumbling over each other in their haste to get out. "I can return it. Get you something more practical. Or nothing. Nothing's good, too."
He looked up at you then, and the devastation in his eyes made your stomach flip. It was the look he got sometimes when he woke up from nightmares, before he remembered where he was. When he was. Lost and guilty and carrying too much weight for one person's shoulders.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"This." He gestured vaguely between you, the journal still clutched in his flesh hand like an anchor. "Acting like nothing matters. Like I didn't just—like this doesn't—" He stopped, frustrated, the words tangling up behind his teeth. "I fucked up. I forgot something important. Why won't you be angry?"
"Because I'm not angry." Your voice stayed steady even as your nails dug crescents into your palms. "I'm fine. We're fine. Everything's—"
"Fine," he finished, bitter as black coffee. "Yeah. You keep saying that."
You shifted your weight, suddenly hyperaware of your body. How your feet ached from standing, cold and numb against the tile. How the dress pulled at your ribs with each breath. How your hands couldn't seem to stop moving, straightening things that didn't need straightening.
"Look, why don't you get cleaned up?" You couldn't meet his eyes, focusing instead on a spot just over his shoulder. "I'll put the food away. We can just... reset. Pretend this didn't happen."
"Is that what you want? To pretend?"
"I want—" The words caught in your throat like fishhooks. It felt like a test.
You forced another smile, felt it stretch your face into something that probably looked more grimace than grin. "I want you to eat something. And maybe put something on that cut. It looks deep."
His flesh hand went to his cheek automatically, coming away with fresh blood. He stared at it like he'd forgotten he was bleeding. Like physical pain was so far down his priority list it barely registered.
"It's nothing."
"Now who's deflecting?" The words slipped out before you could stop them, carrying more edge than you'd intended. A crack in the facade you'd been so carefully maintaining.
His eyes sharpened, zeroing in on that first real break in your performance all night. "Say it."
"Say what?"
"Whatever you're thinking. Whatever you're pushing down." He moved closer, and your body responded without your permission—heart rate spiking, breath catching, skin prickling with awareness. "Come on. Tell me what a shit boyfriend I am. Tell me how I'm ruining this."
"You're not—"
"I am." His voice was rough, urgent. Desperate in a way that made your chest ache. "I know I am. I can see it happening and I can't—I don't know how to stop it. So just say it. Please. Be mad at me."
"I can't." The admission came out small, tired. True. "I can't be mad at you when I know what your life is like. When I know what you carry. It would be like... like being mad at the rain for falling."
His metal hand clenched, servos whirring softly in the quiet apartment.
"I'm not the weather," he said quietly. "I'm a person who makes choices. And I chose wrong tonight."
"You chose to save lives." You moved past him toward the kitchen, needing distance. Needing air that didn't smell like gunpowder and guilt. "Hard to argue with that math."
He caught your wrist—flesh hand, always the flesh hand when he was trying to be gentle. His thumb found your pulse point automatically, and you knew he could feel how it jumped at his touch.
"That's not... You know that's not what this is about."
"Isn't it?" You looked down at his hand on your wrist, at the blood still drying in the creases of his knuckles. At the flesh and bone that could be so gentle and so violent, often in the same night. "Every time you walk out that door, you're choosing them over me. And that's... that's right. That's what heroes do. I just need to be better at accepting it."
"Don't." His grip tightened fractionally. Not enough to hurt, never enough to hurt, but enough to feel the desperation in it. "Don't make me into something noble when I'm fucking this up. When I'm hurting you."
"You're not hurting me." The words tasted like ash. "I'm fine."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh if it wasn't so bitter. "You keep saying that word."
"Because it's true."
"No," he said quietly, "it's not. And we both know it."
You stood there in your kitchen—his kitchen, this shared space that felt more like a crime scene now—and wondered how you'd gotten here. How six months of loving this man had taught you to swallow so much disappointment it had become second nature. Your throat felt full of unsaid words, accusations and pleas and declarations all tangled together into something too big to voice.
"I need to change," you said finally, extracting your wrist from his grip. The skin there felt too warm, like his touch had branded you. "This stupid dress is giving me a headache."
That was a lie too. The headache was from clenched teeth, from holding your face in that careful smile, from the effort of pretending everything was fine when it was anything but. But he let you go, watching you retreat with eyes that seemed to catalog every step like evidence of his failures.
You made it to the bedroom door before his voice stopped you.
"I love you."
The words hit you in the back like bullets. You closed your eyes, hand tightening on the doorframe until your knuckles went white. Your lungs forgot how to work for a moment, chest tight with everything you couldn't say.
"I know," you said without turning around.
Because you did know. That was the worst part. You knew he loved you the way he knew how—desperately, violently, silently. The way a soldier loves peacetime. The way a ghost loves being seen. The way a weapon loves being put down.
It just wasn't enough anymore.
But you couldn't say that. Couldn't risk the weight of that truth. So you did what you'd gotten so good at doing.
You pretended it was fine.
The bedroom was dark when he finally came to bed, but you weren't sleeping. Couldn't, with your mind running circles and your body still humming with the tension of the evening. You'd changed into one of his old shirts and curled up on your side, facing the wall, listening to the sounds of him moving through the apartment. The shower running. The medicine cabinet opening and closing. His footsteps, heavier than usual with exhaustion.
The mattress dipped behind you, and you felt the heat of him before he even touched you. He smelled like your soap now, the gunpowder and blood washed away, leaving just Bucky. Just the man you'd fallen in love with, who was somehow both exactly who you'd thought he was and nothing like it at all.
His flesh hand found your hip, tentative at first, then more certain when you didn't pull away. You never pulled away. That was part of the problem, wasn't it? You'd made yourself so available, so understanding, that he'd forgotten you had edges. Forgotten you could break.
"You awake?" His voice was rough in the darkness, barely above a whisper.
You didn't answer, but your breathing hitched, giving you away. You felt him shift closer, his chest pressing against your back, his arm sliding around your waist to pull you against him. The metal arm stayed wedged between them, carefully positioned so the plates wouldn't touch your skin.
"I'm sorry," he breathed against your neck, lips brushing the sensitive spot below your ear. "I'm so fucking sorry."
You closed your eyes, feeling the familiar routine begin. This was how he apologized when the words weren't enough, when his voice failed him like it so often did. With touch. With his body. With careful, focused attention that used to make you feel cherished.
His hand slipped under the hem of your shirt, fingers splaying across your stomach. Not demanding, just... present. Asking. Always asking, even after six months, like he still couldn't quite believe he was allowed this. His lips pressed against your shoulder, your neck, the spot where your pulse jumped traitorously.
You turned in his arms because you were weak. Because despite everything, your body still responded to his like a flower turning toward the sun. His eyes were dark in the dim light filtering through the curtains, pupils blown wide with want and something that might have been desperation.
He kissed you like he was drowning and you were air. Like he could fix everything broken between you if he just tried hard enough, loved you thoroughly enough. His flesh hand cradled your face like you were something precious, thumb brushing across your cheekbone with aching gentleness.
You let him, because this was easier than talking. Easier than admitting that the distance between you had grown so vast that even this—this thing that had always worked—felt like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound.
He undressed you slowly, reverently, his touch mapping every inch of skin like he was memorizing you. Like he was afraid you might disappear. And maybe you were, in a way. Maybe you'd been disappearing for months, becoming less solid with each missed dinner, each forgotten plan, each night you fell asleep alone.
His mouth followed his hands, pressing apologies into your skin that he couldn't speak aloud. He knew your body like a mission he'd studied, every sensitive spot, every place that made your breath catch. He applied that knowledge with focused intensity, watching your face in the darkness for every micro-expression, adjusting his touch based on the smallest reactions.
It was good. It was always good. He made sure of that with technical precision, with the kind of attention to detail that should have made you feel worshipped. His flesh hand worked between your thighs with practiced movements, finding exactly the right rhythm, the right pressure. His mouth on your breast, your throat, swallowing the sounds you made like they were sustenance.
But even as your body responded, as heat coiled low in your belly and your hands tangled in his hair, some part of you stayed separate. Observing. Cataloging the way he held himself so carefully above you, weight balanced on his right arm while the left stayed pressed against the mattress. The way his breathing stayed controlled, measured, even as sweat beaded on his forehead. The way he watched you with that same focused intensity he brought to everything, like making you come was a mission objective to complete.
When he finally pressed inside you, your back arched and his name fell from your lips like a prayer. He stilled for a moment, forehead pressed to yours, sharing breath in the darkness. You could feel the tremor in his arms, the effort it took to maintain that careful control.
He moved like he was handling something breakable. Deep, measured thrusts that built a steady rhythm designed to take you apart by degrees. His flesh hand found yours, lacing your fingers together beside your head, while the metal one stayed planted firmly on the mattress, bearing his weight.
You wanted to tell him to let go. To stop being so careful, so controlled. To give you something real instead of this perfect performance. But the words stuck in your throat, trapped behind months of fine and okay and it doesn't matter.
He knew exactly what angle made you gasp, exactly how to roll his hips to hit that spot that made stars explode behind your eyelids. He applied this knowledge ruthlessly, efficiently, until you were shaking beneath him, nails digging into his shoulders as waves of pleasure crashed over you.
He watched you fall apart with dark satisfaction, like he'd successfully completed a mission. His own release followed shortly after, his body shuddering silently above you, face buried in your neck. Even then, even lost in his own pleasure, he was quiet. Just harsh breathing and the whisper of your name, barely audible.
After, he held you too tightly, both arms around you now that the careful control wasn't needed. The metal arm was cool against your overheated skin, and you pressed into it, into this part of him he tried so hard to keep separate.
"Better?" he asked quietly, and you could hear the hope in it. Like maybe this had fixed something. Like maybe you'd forgotten about the cold dinner and the lonely wait and the wrapped gift hidden in a drawer.
"Yeah," you whispered, because what else could you say? How could you tell him that technically perfect sex couldn't fill the emotional void between you? That you needed more than his body—you needed his words, his presence, his time?
"Good," he murmured, already drifting toward sleep. The mission was complete. Objective achieved. Girlfriend satisfied.
You lay there in the darkness, listening to his breathing even out, feeling the weight of his arms around you. Six months of this. Six months of being loved by a man who couldn't say it out loud unless he thought he was losing you. Six months of being held by someone who only knew how to hold on too tight or let go completely.
Tomorrow, you told yourself. Tomorrow you'd find your voice. Tomorrow you'd stop pretending everything was fine.
Tonight, you just closed your eyes and pretended to sleep, counting his heartbeats against your back and wondering when love had started feeling so much like loneliness.
The morning light was doing that thing where it slanted through the blinds just wrong, striping across your face in a way that guaranteed a headache by noon. You'd been awake for the past hour, maybe two, caught in that special purgatory between sleep and consciousness where all your mistakes liked to parade themselves for review.
Bucky was still wrapped around you, flesh arm heavy across your waist, metal arm tucked carefully behind his back. Even in sleep, he kept it away from you. Like his subconscious had been programmed with the same careful distance as his waking mind.
You studied the ceiling, counting water stains like constellations, and tried to remember when it had become like this. When you'd become someone who catalogued disappointments instead of joys. Someone who lay in bed calculating the exact weight of a sleeping man's arm across your ribs.
It hadn't always been like this.
Six months ago, you'd been the woman who'd laughed—actually laughed—when he'd awkwardly admitted his therapist had suggested he ask you out. Not a polite titter or an uncomfortable chuckle, but a real, surprised burst of laughter that had made him jump.
"Oh my god," you'd said, wiping tears from your eyes while he sat frozen across from you at the dive bar he'd chosen. "Shit. That's definitely the most honest thing anyone's ever said on a first date."
His face had done something complicated—surprise melting into confusion, then something that might have been the birth of a smile. "You're... not going to throw your drink at me?"
"Why would I?" You'd raised your beer, foam sloshing dangerously close to the rim. "At least you're, I don’t know. Working on yourself. Do you know how rare that is, these days?"
He'd clinked his bottle against yours, and there it was—a real smile. The kind that transformed his whole face, made him look younger, softer somehow. "To horrible first impressions?"
"To honesty," you'd corrected. "Even the awkward kind."
That had been the beginning. Or maybe the beginning had been earlier, in your bookstore that smelled like dust and old paper and the obscure eighties rock you played just loud enough to discourage teenagers from using it as a hangout. He'd wandered in looking lost, all broad shoulders and careful movements, like he was afraid of breaking something.
Five visits. That's what it had taken. Five separate occasions of him pretending to browse your stacks while stealing glances at you over copies of Kerouac and Murakami. You'd watched him work up to it like a man approaching a live wire, and when he'd finally asked—voice rough, words tumbling over each other—you'd said yes before he'd even finished the sentence.
You'd slept together after that first date. It had surprised both of you—the way you'd crashed together outside your apartment, the way he'd kissed you like he was starving for it, the way you'd pulled him inside without a second thought.
"I don't usually—" he'd said after, lying in your bed looking shell-shocked and unbearably soft in the lamplight.
"Yeah, me neither," you'd admitted, then traced a finger along his flesh arm, marveling at how someone so dangerous could be so gentle. "But I'm glad we did."
He'd pulled you closer then, nose brushing against your temple. "Me too."
Those early days had been full of small revelations. You'd discovered he kept notes—actual handwritten notes on receipt backs and napkins and torn corners of newspapers. You'd found them scattered around his apartment like breadcrumbs: likes her coffee with cinnamon when she's sad and wears dad's old college sweatshirt on laundry day and laughs at commercials but only when she thinks no one's watching.
"Is this... about me?" you'd asked, holding up a scrap that read hates cilantro but won't send food back.
He'd flushed, reaching for the paper, but you'd held it out of reach. "My memory," he'd said quietly. "It's not always... Some days are harder than others. I don't want to forget the important things."
You'd kissed him then, soft and lingering, tasting the vulnerability in his admission. "I hate cilantro," you'd confirmed against his lips. "But I love that you noticed."
He'd come home bleeding more nights than not in those early months, before the move, when boundaries were still being negotiated. You'd gotten good at first aid by necessity, keeping supplies under your bathroom sink like some people kept spare towels. He'd sit on a stool while you worked, and inevitably—always—his hands would find your waist. He'd press his face against your stomach like he was trying to breathe you in, to memorize the feel of you through your sleep shirt.
"I'm okay," he'd mumble into the fabric while you cleaned a gash on his shoulder.
"I know," you'd say, even when he wasn't. Even when his hands shook against your hips and his breath came too fast. "I've got you."
Those were the nights he'd kiss you like a drowning man, desperate and deep, mapping your mouth with his tongue like he was trying to memorize the geography of you. You'd discovered early on that he loved kissing—could spend hours just making out like teenagers, all wandering hands and bitten lips and breathless laughter when you had to come up for air.
"This okay?" he'd ask between kisses, even after months together, checking in like he still couldn't quite believe he was allowed this.
"More than okay," you'd assure him, and watch his pupils blow wide before diving back in.
He'd sit through terrible spy movies with you, the ones with ridiculous plots and worse dialogue, because he'd noticed your collection and drawn his own conclusions. You'd curl up on his couch while Hollywood's version of espionage played out in technicolor absurdity.
"That's not how any of that works," he'd mutter when the hero rappelled through a ventilation shaft.
"That's the point," you'd say, tucking your feet under his thigh. "If I wanted realism, I'd watch the news."
But he'd watch anyway, adding dry commentary that made you laugh harder than the intentional jokes. During the love scenes, he'd trace patterns on your ankle with his thumb, pretending he wasn't affected while his ears turned pink.
The moving in together had been gradual, then sudden. Your toothbrush at his place. His favorite mug at yours. Until one day he'd looked around your apartment—at his jacket on your coat rack, his books mixed with yours, his reading glasses on your nightstand—and said, "This is inefficient."
"What is?"
"Paying for two places when we're always together anyway."
Not the most romantic proposition, but the way he'd been fidgeting with his car keys, nervous energy radiating off him in waves, told a different story.
"James Buchanan Barnes," you'd said slowly, "are you asking me to move in with you?"
"Maybe. Yes. If you want." He'd run his flesh hand through his hair, messing it up in that way that made your chest tight. "I want to wake up with you every day. Not just sometimes. Every day."
You'd said yes, of course. How could you not, when he looked at you like that? Like you were his anchor in a storm he couldn't name.
But somewhere between then and now, something had shifted. The notes stopped appearing—or maybe you'd stopped looking for them. The movie nights became fewer, his commentary sharper when they did happen. He still kissed you like he was drowning, but now it felt like he was already too far underwater to save.
"Hey," his voice, rough with sleep, pulled you from your reverie. "You're thinking too loud."
"Just thinking," you said softly, not turning to face him.
"Yeah?" His lips found the spot where your neck met your shoulder, pressing a kiss there that felt like an apology. "What about?"
The way we used to be. When loving you felt like breathing instead of drowning.
"The Donovans," you said instead, nodding toward the wall. "They're at it again. Who starts rearranging furniture at six in the morning?"
He huffed a laugh against your skin, and you could feel him listening. Sure enough, the telltale scrape of something heavy being dragged across the floor filtered through the thin walls, followed by muffled voices.
"Maybe they're trying to spice things up," he murmured. "New feng shui, new marriage."
"Is that what we need? Better feng shui?"
His arm tightened around you, pulling you back against his chest. "I don't think there's a furniture arrangement that fixes what I've mangled."
The honesty of it caught you off guard. For a moment, it felt like before. Like you were still those two people who'd found something unexpected in each other.
Then his phone buzzed on the nightstand, and you felt him go still. The mission alert tone. Because of course it was.
"I know," you said before he could speak. "You have to go."
"I—" He paused, and you could feel the weight of words unsaid pressing against your spine. "Yeah. I do."
You sat up, pulling the sheet around yourself, watching him dress in efficient movements. His tactical gear was kept in the closet now, easy access. When had that become normal? When had you stopped noticing the weapons hidden around your shared space like deadly décor?
At the door, he paused. "About last night—"
"Bucky." You finally looked at him, taking in the guilt etched into every line of his face. "Just... be careful, okay?"
Something flickered in his eyes—surprise, maybe, at the lack of accusation. "Always am."
"No," you said quietly. "You're really not."
He crossed back to you in three strides, cupping your face in his hands—both of them, metal and flesh—and kissed you like he used to. Like you were oxygen and he'd been holding his breath for too long. When he pulled back, you were both breathing hard.
"I love you," he said, fierce and desperate. "Even when I'm shit at showing it. I love you."
"I know," you whispered. "That's what makes this so hard."
He left then, and you were alone with the ghost of his kiss still on your lips and the weight of everything unsaid settling into your bones. You made coffee, adding cinnamon like you always did when you were sad, and tried not to think about how he'd remember that detail but forget your anniversary.
Love was funny that way. It could be in the small notes scattered like breadcrumbs and still get lost in the larger leaving. It could be desperately real and still not be enough.
You found a piece of paper stuck to the coffee maker as you reached for a mug. His handwriting, clearly recent—the pen he'd used was still uncapped on the counter:
she only listens to Fleetwood Mac when she can't sleep. Dreams instead of Rumours = the bad kind of insomnia
You stared at it for a long time, remembering last Tuesday when you'd played "Dreams" on repeat at 3 AM, curled on the couch while he'd been supposedly asleep. He'd been listening. Taking notes. Still trying to decode you like you were a mission he could complete if he just gathered enough intel.
You carefully folded it and put it in the drawer where you'd hidden his anniversary gift. Another piece of evidence that you'd been loved by Bucky Barnes. Another reminder that sometimes love, no matter how real, wasn't enough to make someone stay.
The nightmare came a few weeks later, on a Tuesday.
You'd been having a good day, or at least good by recent standards. Bucky had been home for a full week—some kind of record lately. He'd even cooked dinner, that pasta dish his mother used to make, though he could never quite remember if it was oregano or basil she'd used. You'd eaten together at the actual table, phones face down, talking about nothing important in that comfortable way that made you ache for how things used to be.
Maybe that's why you'd let your guard down. Why you'd curled into him that night instead of maintaining the careful distance that had become your default. He'd seemed present, actually there with you instead of wherever his mind usually wandered. His arm had been warm around you, and you'd fallen asleep to the steady rhythm of his breathing.
You woke to darkness and the sensation of being trapped.
At first, your sleep-addled brain couldn't process what was happening. The pressure around your throat was firm, mechanical, unforgiving. Metal fingers pressed against your windpipe with calculated precision, not quite cutting off air but making each breath a conscious effort. Your hands flew up instinctively, fingernails scraping against vibranium that wouldn't yield.
"Bucky." The word came out strangled, barely there.
His eyes were open but vacant, seeing something that wasn't you, wasn't this room, wasn't this year. In the dim light, you could see his face contorted with rage—no, not rage. Fear. Raw, primal terror that belonged to some other time, some other place where he wasn't safe, where he had to fight to survive.
"Soldat." The Russian fell from his lips like acid. More words followed, too quick and slurred with sleep for you to catch, but the tone was clear. Orders. He was following orders.
Your vision started to blur at the edges. Not from lack of air—not yet—but from the tears that came unbidden. This wasn't him. This wasn't your Bucky who kept notes about your coffee preferences and kissed you like you were precious. This was the Winter Soldier, and he was going to kill you in your own bed.
"James." You forced the word out, put every ounce of love you had into it. Your hand found his face, palm against stubble and scars. "Baby, please. It's me. You're home."
For a moment, nothing. The pressure continued, steady and sure. Then—a flicker. Something in his eyes shifted, pupils contracting as consciousness clawed its way back. You watched the exact second he came back to himself, watched the recognition slam into him like a physical blow.
The hand released so fast you gasped, air rushing back into your lungs in a painful burst. But the sound of your breathing—ragged, desperate—seemed to break something in him.
"No." The word ripped from his throat, raw and disbelieving. He scrambled backward so violently he fell off the bed, hitting the floor hard. "No, no, no. What did I—Oh god."
"I'm okay," you tried to say, but your voice came out wrecked, harsh. The sound of it—the damage he'd caused—made him flinch like you'd struck him.
He was on his knees now, staring at his metal hand like it was covered in blood. Maybe in his mind, it was. "I was—Jesus Christ, I was killing you. I was—" His breath came in sharp pants, heading toward hyperventilation. "Your neck. Let me see your neck."
"Bucky—"
"Let me see." It came out as almost a roar, desperate and wild.
You pushed yourself up, hand going unconsciously to your throat. Even that light touch made you wince, and you knew without looking that there would be marks. A perfect blueprint of his hand in bruises.
He saw your wince. Of course he did. And the look that crossed his face—you'd seen him shot, stabbed, thrown from buildings. You'd never seen him look like this. Like someone had reached inside and torn something vital loose.
"I… I put my hands on you. I tried to—" He couldn't finish, just stared at you like you were already dead, like he'd already lost you to his own monstrosity.
"You were asleep," you said, voice still rough but steadier now. "You were having a nightmare. You didn't know—"
"Does that matter?" He laughed, but it was a broken sound, closer to a sob. "Does it fucking matter that I was asleep when I'm strong enough to snap your neck without trying? When I—" He pressed his flesh hand to his mouth, shoulders shaking. "I could taste it. The mission. Kill the target, eliminate the witness. You were just—you were just a body to eliminate."
"But you stopped." You moved to the edge of the bed, needing to be closer even as he flinched away. "You heard me and you stopped."
"This time." He looked up at you then, and his eyes were wet, desperate. "What about next time? What happens when I don't wake up in time? When I squeeze just a little harder, hold on just a few seconds longer?" His voice broke completely. "I'll kill you, and I'll wake up with your body in our bed, and I'll have to live with that. I'll have to know that the last thing you felt was me hurting you."
"That won't happen."
"You don't know that!" He was on his feet now, backing toward the door. "Nobody knows that! I don't even know what's in my head, what they put there. Seventy years of programming, of turning me into a weapon, and you think—what? That love is enough to fix that? That I can just will myself better?"
You wanted to say yes. Wanted to believe it. But the words stuck in your throat—the throat that still ached from his grip.
"I'm sleeping on the couch," he said, and it sounded like a sentencing. Your heart dropped into the pit of your stomach.
"Bucky, please—"
"I can't." He stopped in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame like he needed it to stay upright. "I can't lay next to you knowing what I'm capable of. I can't touch you with hands that—" He looked down at the metal arm, gleaming dully in the darkness. "I was okay with being a monster when it was just me. But I can't—I won't let you be collateral damage."
"You're not a monster."
He turned then, and the look he gave you was almost pitying. "Tell that to your neck."
You sat there, on the edge of the bed you'd shared for three months, and listened to him settle on the couch. Heard him punch a pillow, once, twice, muffling what sounded suspiciously like sobs. You wanted to go to him, to hold him and tell him it wasn't his fault, that you weren't afraid.
But you were afraid. Not of him—never of him—but of the ghosts in his head that could turn him into someone else. Of the war between who he was and what they'd made him.
Your fingers found your throat again, tracing the shape of his hand in tender skin. Tomorrow, there would be bruises. Purple and blue and sickly yellow, a necklace of trauma you'd have to hide with scarves and makeup. But worse than the physical marks was the knowledge that he'd never forgive himself for this.
That he'd use it as evidence in the case he was always building against himself: why he didn't deserve love, why he couldn't have nice things, why James Buchanan Barnes was too broken to be saved.
You pulled his pillow against your chest—it still smelled like him, like cedar and something indefinably safe—and tried not to think about how this was the beginning of the end. How he'd pull away now, inch by inch, until there was nothing left but the empty space where love used to live.
In the living room, you could hear him moving restlessly, probably calculating the exact distance needed to keep you safe from him. Always the protector, even when the thing he was protecting you from was himself.
You wanted to tell him that the real damage wasn't the bruises that would fade in a week. It was this—the distance, the self-hatred, the way he was already grieving a relationship he'd decided was too dangerous to keep.
But your throat hurt, and your words weren't working right, and sometimes love wasn't enough to overcome seventy years of programming.
So you held his pillow and listened to him not sleeping on the couch, both of you alone in the dark, measuring the distance between what you had and what you were about to lose.
The bar was too loud and too warm, and you'd lost count of your drinks somewhere around the third toast to "getting the gang back together." Your college friends were all talking over each other, five conversations happening at once, and you were pretending to follow along while the room tilted gently to the left, then right, like a ship in uncertain waters.
Your phone sat face-up on the sticky table, silent. Three days. Seventy-two hours since the last check-in, which had been just one word: Alive. You'd stared at it for so long the letters had started to blur. Alive meant not dead. It didn't mean safe or whole or missing you or anything else your desperate brain wanted to read into it.
"Another round?" Derek—or was it Dylan?—appeared with a tray of shots that glowed an alarming shade of blue. He'd been in your International Relations class senior year, the guy who always sat too close during group projects and somehow never had his portion of the work done on time.
"I'm good," you said, but the words came out slurred, tongue thick in your mouth, and somehow there was already a shot glass being pressed into your hand. The glass was cold, wet with condensation, and your fingers felt clumsy around it.
"Come on," he said, sliding into the booth beside you. The vinyl squeaked under his weight, and suddenly the booth felt half its previous size. His thigh pressed against yours, heat seeping through your jeans. "Like old times."
Nothing about college had involved Derek-or-Dylan sitting this close, but your brain was too fuzzy to form the words. Thinking felt like trying to swim through honey. The shot burned going down, tasted like artificial raspberry and the kind of decision you'd regret in the morning. Your throat closed around it, body trying to reject what your mind had already accepted.
Someone was laughing too loud. Sarah? Stephanie? The girl who'd lived down the hall junior year. Her engagement ring caught the bar lights, throwing little rainbows across the table. Engaged. Normal. Safe. Her fiancé probably slept in their bed. Probably came home when he said he would.
Your phone buzzed. Your heart leaped—stupid, traitorous thing—but it was just your credit card app, politely informing you of suspicious activity at "O'Malley's Tavern." Yeah, you thought hazily, five rounds for people you haven't seen in years was pretty fucking suspicious.
You picked up your phone, thumb hovering over Bucky's contact. The little green dot that showed he was active had been gone for days. Off the grid. Radio silent. But that didn't stop you from opening the messages, from reading the last exchange from four days ago:
You: be safe
Bucky: Always am.
Liar, you thought, and started typing.
You: hey
You stared at the word, deleted it, tried again. Your vision swam, letters doubling and tripling before reforming.
You: heyyyy. i miss u
Derek-or-Dylan was saying something about his job at a consulting firm, his hand gesturing wide enough to brush your shoulder, your arm, coming to rest on the back of the booth behind you. His cologne was too strong, something that probably had a name like "Masculine Musk" or "Power." It made your stomach roll. You shifted forward, but the room swayed with the movement, and you had to grab the edge of the table to steady yourself.
You: i know ur probly saving the world rn but i wanted u to know
You: taht i love u
You: that**
You: even if ur being stupid lately
The words looked wrong on the screen, but you couldn't figure out how to fix them. Your fingers felt disconnected from your brain, moving of their own accord.
"You okay?" Derek-Dylan asked, and his hand was on your knee now, squeezing gently. His palm was damp through your jeans. "You seem distracted."
"I'm fine," you mumbled, trying to pull your leg away. But in the booth, trapped between him and the wall, there was nowhere to go. Your skin crawled where he touched you, but your body felt too heavy to properly react.
You: ur therapist called btw
You: well not called but like. sent another email
You: oh i hacked ur email. sry.
You: i mean not rlly since u left it up on my laptop but whatever
You: ur gonna get in troubel
You: trouble*
You: i dont want u to get in trouble
The shots were hitting harder now, making your thumbs clumsy on the screen. Everything felt like it was moving through water. Someone was telling a story about their promotion, their engagement, their perfect life that definitely didn't involve a boyfriend who slept on the couch and disappeared for days without warning.
Your chest felt tight. When was the last time you'd been able to breathe properly? When was the last time your lungs didn't feel like they were working at half capacity?
You: do u even miss me anymore
You: or am i just another thing u have to manage
You: like ur therapy u dont go to
Derek-Dylan's hand was back, higher this time, fingers pressing into your thigh. The pressure made bile rise in your throat. "You were always the quiet one," he was saying, voice low and too close to your ear. His breath was hot, smelled like beer and those terrible shots. "The mysterious one."
"Bathroom," you managed, practically falling out of the booth. The floor rushed up to meet you, and you caught yourself on the edge of the table, glasses rattling. Someone's drink sloshed over the rim, ice cubes scattering.
"Whoa there," he said, reaching for your elbow, fingers wrapping around your arm. "Let me help—"
You: i went out tonight
You: trying to be normal
You: but nothing feels normal without uYou: withuot
You: without*
You: fuck
The hallway to the bathroom was narrower than it should be, walls pressing in like they were trying to squeeze the air from your lungs. You leaned against the cool brick, phone bright in the darkness. The screen swam in and out of focus. More words pouring out now, without filter, without thought, like blood from a wound you couldn't stem.
You: dereks being creepy
You: or dylan
You: idk his name
You: he keeps touching me
You: i dont like it
You: i want to come home but home doesnt feel like home when ur not there
You: when ur on the couch
You: when u wont even look at me
[Incoming call from Bucky - 10:16 PM]
Your phone started buzzing. Not a text. A call.
Bucky's name filled the screen, and your heart lurched so hard you nearly dropped the phone. Your hands were shaking—when had they started shaking? You stared at it, paralyzed, watching it ring. Once. Twice. Three times.
[Missed call - 10:16 PM]
Immediately, it started again.
[Incoming call from Bucky - 10:16 PM]
You should answer. Of course you should answer. But your hands were trembling and your throat felt thick with unshed tears and you were so fucking drunk and what if he was angry about the texts? What if he was calling to tell you to stop, to leave him alone, to finally say the words that would make this ending real?
[Incoming call from Bucky - 10:17 PM]
The third call. This time, your trembling thumb hit decline.
The texts started immediately.
Bucky: Hey, sweetheart. You okay?
Bucky: Can you pick up?
Bucky: Please answer
Bucky: I just need to know you're safe
Bucky: Baby, please
That last one made your eyes burn, tears hot and sudden. When was the last time he'd called you baby? When was the last time his voice had sounded anything but carefully controlled? Your chest ached with missing him, a physical pain that made you press your hand against your sternum.
You stumbled out the back exit into an alley that smelled like garbage and rain and piss. The cold air hit your overheated skin like a slap, and you had to lean against the wall to keep from sliding down it. The brick was rough against your palms, grounding you even as the world spun.
Your phone rang again. This time, muscle memory had you answering before your brain could catch up.
"Hey." His voice filled your ear, warm and worried with something sharp underneath. Like honey poured over broken glass. "There you are. You okay?"
"Bucky?" Your own voice came out small, wobbly, and you hated how desperate you sounded.
"Yeah, sweetheart. It's me. Where are you?"
"I'm..." You looked around the alley like it might provide answers. Dumpster. Fire escape. Puddle of something you didn't want to identify. "I'm out. With friends. College people."
"Okay." He kept his tone gentle, but you could hear movement in the background—keys jingling, a door closing, footsteps on pavement. "You having fun?"
The question broke something in you. The tears you'd been holding back spilled over, hot on your cheeks. "No," you admitted, and then the words just tumbled out, sloppy and slurred. "No, 'm not having fun. I miss you and I'm tired and everyone's talking about their perfect lives and Derek won't stop touching me and I just want to come home but you're not even there, you're in Warsaw or wherever saving the world and—"
"Who's touching you?"
The words cut through your rambling like a blade. All the gentleness gone, replaced with something cold and dangerous that made your drunk brain struggle to catch up.
"What?" You blinked, trying to process the sudden shift through the fog of alcohol.
"You said someone's touching you. Who?"
"I—Derek. Or Dylan? From college. He's just... he kept putting his hand on my leg and I didn't..." You trailed off, some sober part of your brain finally catching up to what you were saying. To who you were saying it to. Your stomach dropped.
Silence. The kind that made your skin prickle with unease, that made you want to take the words back, swallow them down with the rest of your mistakes.
"I'm coming to get you," he said finally, and his voice was too calm, too controlled. The voice he used when he was trying very hard not to kill someone. "Tell me where you are."
"You're in Warsaw," you said, confused. Your brain felt like it was operating on a five-second delay.
Another pause. When he spoke again, something in his tone made your chest tight. "I've been back for three days. Debriefing at the Tower."
The words hit you like cold water. Three days. He'd been in New York for three days and hadn't come home. Hadn't even told you he was back. The pain of it was sharp, sudden, cutting through the alcohol fog.
"Oh." It came out small, pathetic. You pressed your free hand against the brick wall, needing something solid to hold onto.
"Send me your location," he said, and you could hear him moving faster now, the sound of a car door opening. "I'll be there in twenty."
"You don't have to—"
"Location. Now." Not harsh, but firm. The voice that brooked no argument.
You fumbled with your phone, nearly dropping it twice before managing to share your location. The blue dot pulsing on the map looked lonely, lost. Like you felt.
"Good girl," he said, and the familiar endearment made your eyes burn fresh. "Now listen to me. You're gonna go wait out front where it's well-lit. You're not going back inside. You're not talking to Derek or Dylan or anyone else. You're just gonna wait for me. Understood?"
"Okay," you whispered.
"Say it back."
"Wait out front. Don't go inside. Don't talk to anyone."
"That's right. I'll be there soon."
"Bucky?" Your voice cracked. "I'm sorry. About the texts. I shouldn't have—"
"Don't." His voice softened, just slightly. "Don't apologize. Just... just wait for me, okay? We'll talk when you're safe."
Safe. Like you weren't safe now. Like you ever felt safe anymore, even in your own home, with him sleeping a room away like a stranger.
"Okay," you said again.
"Twenty minutes," he promised, and then he was gone.
You stared at your phone screen, at the string of messages you'd sent, each one more pathetic than the last. Your reflection in the dark screen looked distorted, wrong. Mascara smudged, lips still stained from whatever was in those shots, eyes too bright with tears and alcohol.
Twenty minutes. You could wait twenty minutes.
You pushed off the wall, the world tilting dangerously, and made your way to the front of the bar on unsteady legs. Each step required concentration, like walking a tightrope.
Three days. He'd been home for three days.
You wrapped your arms around yourself, suddenly freezing despite the warm night. Your skin felt too tight, like it didn't fit right anymore. Everything felt wrong. The streetlight above flickered, casting strange shadows that made you dizzy.
Five minutes passed. Then ten. Time moved strangely when you were drunk, too fast and too slow all at once. You watched cars pass, their headlights blurring into streaks of light. Counted them to keep your mind off the way your stomach churned.
"There you are."
You jumped, nearly losing your balance. Derek-or-Dylan stood there, that same too-wide smile on his face. Up close, you could see the flush on his cheeks, the slightly unfocused look in his eyes. He was drunk too, but not as far gone as you.
"Thought you got lost," he said, moving closer. "Come on, let's get you back inside."
"No." You shook your head, which was a mistake. The world spun harder. "I'm waiting for someone."
"In this state?" He laughed, but it wasn't a nice sound. "You can barely stand. Here—"
He reached for you, and you tried to step back, but the wall was already against your spine. Nowhere to go. His hand wrapped around your upper arm, grip too tight, and you could smell his cologne again, that awful musky scent that made your stomach revolt.
"Stop." The word came out slurred, weak. "I said I'm waiting—"
"Don't be like that." He crowded closer, his other hand coming up to rest on the wall beside your head, caging you in. "We were having fun inside, weren't we?"
"No." You turned your head away, but that just exposed your neck. His breath was hot against your skin. "Please, just—"
The sound of tires squealing made both of you jump. A black car pulled up to the curb so fast it fishtailed slightly, leaving rubber on the asphalt. Your drunk brain took several seconds to process what was happening—car, familiar car, Bucky's car, Bucky—before he was already out, moving with the kind of purpose that made your foggy mind finally understand why people crossed the street when they saw him coming.
He didn't run. Didn't need to. He just strode forward with inevitable violence in every line of his body, and Derek-or-Dylan was already backing up, hands raised, mouth opening to form words that never made it past his lips—
The crack of bone was loud in the quiet street.
Derek-or-Dylan screamed, dropping to his knees like someone had cut his strings. His wrist—god, his wrist was bent like wrists weren't supposed to bend, and your stomach lurched hard enough that you had to swallow back bile. The world tilted sideways, and you gripped the brick wall harder, rough texture the only thing keeping you upright.
"Touch her again," Bucky said, voice conversational, almost pleasant, like he was discussing the weather, "and I'll break the other one. Then start on your legs."
He wasn't even breathing hard. Hadn't broken a sweat. Just stood there in dark jeans and that leather jacket you'd bought him for his birthday, looking like he'd done nothing more strenuous than walk across a room. But there was something in his stance, in the casual way he watched Derek-or-Dylan writhe on the ground, that made your drunk brain whisper dangerous even as your body sang safe.
"My wrist," Derek-or-Dylan moaned, high and panicked. "You broke my fucking wrist!"
"Yeah," Bucky agreed, matter-of-fact. "I did."
Then he turned to you, and it was like watching a storm clear. All that cold violence melted away, replaced with something soft, concerned, yours. His eyes tracked over you, cataloging damage—checking for hurt you couldn't even identify through the alcohol haze.
"Get in the car, baby," he said, voice gentle now. He held out his hand—flesh hand, always the flesh hand when he was being careful with you.
"Okay," you said stupidly, the word coming out slurred. You were still staring at Derek-or-Dylan clutching his wrist and moaning on the sidewalk. Your brain felt like it was operating on a ten-second delay, trying to connect crack with bone with Bucky did that with for you.
You pushed off the wall and immediately regretted it. The world spun violently, your legs deciding they were more suggestion than requirement. You would have fallen if Bucky hadn't been there, suddenly, impossibly fast, arm around your waist.
"Whoa," he murmured. "I've got you."
"'M really drunk," you informed him, like maybe he hadn't noticed. Your words mushed together at the edges. "Like... really, really drunk."
"I can see that." Was that fondness in his voice? You couldn't tell. Everything sounded underwater.
He guided you to the car like you were made of spun glass and bad decisions, opening the passenger door and basically pouring you into the seat. Your limbs felt disconnected, uncooperative. The leather was cool against your overheated skin, and it smelled like him—that mix of cedar and metal and something uniquely Bucky that made your chest ache even through the drunk fog.
He rounded the car, pausing to crouch beside Derek-or-Dylan. Through the windshield, you watched him say something that made all the color drain from Derek-or-Dylan's face. Even from here, even drunk, you could see the man nodding frantically, like a bobblehead having a panic attack.
Then Bucky was sliding into the driver's seat, the door closing with a solid thunk that felt like safety. Like coming home. Even though home didn't feel like home anymore and you were too drunk to remember why.
"Seatbelt," he said quietly.
You stared at the buckle like it was advanced calculus. Your fingers felt like they belonged to someone else, clumsy and too big. "Can't," you mumbled. "Fingers're drunk too."
He leaned over to help, and suddenly he was so close you could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, could count his eyelashes if your vision would stop swimming. His hands—even the metal one—moved with perfect precision while yours fumbled uselessly in your lap.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, pulling back to look at you properly. His eyes were doing that thing where they went all intense and worried. "Did he—"
"No." You shook your head, which was a terrible idea. The car started spinning. Or maybe you were spinning. Hard to tell. "Jus'... grabbed my arm. Wanted to..." You frowned, trying to remember. "Something. Dunno. His breath smelled bad."
"I know." His hand came up like he was going to touch your face, then dropped. "I know."
The engine purred to life, and then you were moving. You pressed your forehead against the cool window because it felt nice and also because holding your head up was suddenly very difficult. The city lights blurred past in long streamers of color that made you dizzy.
"You've been back for three days," you said, though it came out more like "you've'n back fr'three days."
His hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Yeah."
"Were you gonna tell me?" The words were getting harder to form. Your tongue felt too big for your mouth.
Silence stretched between you, long enough that you almost forgot what you'd asked.
"I needed time," he said finally. "To think. To figure out how to..."
"How to what?"
"How to keep you safe." The words came out raw. "How to be near you without being a danger to you. How to—" He cut himself off, jaw clenching tightly.
You wanted to laugh, but it came out as more of a hiccup-sob hybrid. "You broke his wrist."
"He was touching you."
"Could've jus'... asked him to stop." The words kept sliding into each other.
"No," he said, and there was something final in it. "I couldn't have."
You turned to look at him, which required way more effort than it should have. The streetlights kept catching his face in flashes—sharp jaw, furrowed brow, eyes fixed on the road like it personally offended him. He looked tired. He looked dangerous. He looked like everything you wanted and couldn't have and your drunk brain couldn't remember why that was important.
"'M drunk," you announced, like maybe he'd forgotten in the last thirty seconds.
"I know."
"Really, really drunk."
"I know that too." His lips twitched, almost a smile. "The texts kind of gave it away."
Oh god. The texts. You groaned, trying to sink through the seat and into the road below. "Fuck. 'M sorry. Shouldn't have—they were so stupid—"
"I told you not to apologize."
"But 'm being stupid, and you were prob'ly busy with... with whatever, and I just—"
"Baby." He said it soft but firm, like punctuation. "The texts were fine. More than fine. They were..." He paused, and you watched him search for words through your blurry vision. "They were the first honest thing either of us has said in weeks."
That shut you up. You stared at him, trying to process his words, but thinking felt like trying to catch fish with your bare hands. Slippery. Impossible.
"We need to talk," he continued. "But not tonight. Tonight, you're drunk and I'm..." He trailed off.
"Angry?" you supplied, though it came out more like "ang-ry?"
"Yeah." He glanced at you, something soft flickering in his eyes. "But not at you. Never at you."
"He was jus'... just some guy from college," you said, words tumbling over each other. "He didn't... didn't matter."
"He put his hands on you." The words came out flat, matter-of-fact. "That matters."
You thought about arguing, but the thoughts kept sliding away before you could catch them. Something about hypocrisy and beds and sleeping alone, but it was all too muddy, too complicated for your drunk brain to sort through.
"Missed you," you said instead, small and honest and probably too raw. "Know 'm not s'posed to say that. Know we're... whatever we are. But missed you so much I couldn't—can't breathe sometimes."
His hand found yours across the center console, fingers interlacing. It was the first time he'd touched you voluntarily in weeks, and the simple contact made your eyes burn with tears you were too drunk to control.
"I know," he said quietly. "Me too."
You squeezed his hand, probably too hard, but he didn't pull away. "Feel sick," you admitted.
"I know, sweetheart. We're almost home."
"Not home," you mumbled, the words spilling out before you could stop them. "Just 'partment. Home's where you are, but you're never there."
You felt more than saw him flinch, but the world was getting fuzzy at the edges and spinning faster now, and you couldn't remember why that was important. His thumb rubbed circles on your hand, and you focused on that sensation, let it anchor you as the city lights blurred past.
You were drunk. Really, really drunk. But somehow, in the midst of all that spinning and blurring and too-much-ness, one thought stayed crystal clear:
He'd come for you. He'd been home for three days without telling you, but when you'd needed him—really needed him—he'd come.
You didn't know what that meant. Didn't know if it changed anything.
But for now, for this moment, with his hand in yours and the familiar streets leading back to whatever home was these days, it was enough.
The rest of the night exists in fragments. Snapshots through a drunk haze that would embarrass you later, when sobriety brought all the sharp edges back.
Bucky's hands, impossibly gentle as he helped you from the car. The way you'd swayed into him, and how he'd let you, just for a moment, before steadying you with careful touches. The elevator ride where you'd pressed your face into his chest and breathed him in like you'd been suffocating for weeks.
"Easy," he'd murmured when you stumbled over your own feet at the apartment door. "I've got you."
And he did. Those careful hands working the zipper of your jeans. Pulling your sweater from each arm. The fabric pooling at your feet while you stood there, too drunk to be self-conscious, too tired to pretend you didn't need him.
"Arms up," he'd said softly, and you'd complied, letting him pull one of his worn t-shirts over your head. It smelled like him. You might have cried about that, but the memories blur together, everything soft and underwater.
His boxers, rolled at the waist to fit. A glass of water pressed into your hands. "Drink all of it." Two ibuprofen. "These too."
And then—miracle of miracles—the bed. Not the couch. The bed, with its too-soft pillows and sheets that had forgotten the shape of him. You'd curled on your side, expecting him to retreat to his usual post in the living room.
Instead, the mattress dipped behind you. Arms wrapped around your waist, pulling you back against a chest you'd mapped with your fingers a hundred times but hadn't touched in weeks. His lips found the nape of your neck, pressing kisses there like prayers, like apologies, like promises he couldn't keep.
"I love you," whispered into your hair. "I'm so sorry. I love you so fucking much."
You'd wanted to respond, to turn in his arms and demand he explain why love felt like leaving. But sleep was already pulling you under, and his warmth was the first comfort you'd felt in months, and so you'd let the darkness take you while he held on like you might disappear.
Consciousness returned like a slap.
Your mouth tasted like something had died in it. Your head pounded in rhythm with your heartbeat, each pulse sending spikes of pain behind your eyes. But worse than the hangover was the memory, creeping back in horrible HD clarity.
The texts. Oh god, the texts.
Derek's hand on your thigh.
Bucky breaking his wrist with the casual efficiency of someone opening a jar.
Three days. He'd been back for three days.
You opened your eyes carefully, squinting against the morning light that streamed through the curtains like an assault. The bed was empty beside you, but still warm. He hadn't been gone long. The indent of his body remained in the sheets, a ghost of pressure that made your chest constrict so suddenly you couldn't breathe.
Your ribs felt too tight, like someone had wrapped wire around them and was slowly twisting. Each inhale scraped against something raw inside you, something that had been bleeding quietly for months but suddenly felt fatal. You pressed your palm flat against your sternum, hard, trying to counter the implosion happening behind your bones.
From the kitchen, the sound of cabinets opening. The clink of a pan. Coffee brewing—the smell both nauseating and necessary.
You sat up slowly, the room tilting slightly before settling. Your hands shook as you reached for the water on the nightstand, downing what was left and wishing it was enough to wash away everything about last night. But it wasn't. Nothing would be.
Because now, in the harsh light of sobriety, you could see everything clearly. The past six months stretched out behind you like a road map of small heartbreaks. The progression from sharing a bed to him sleeping on the couch. From daily texts to radio silence. From being partners to being strangers who happened to share a lease.
And last night—last night he'd held you like he used to. Kissed your neck. Whispered that he loved you.
After being home for three days without telling you.
After weeks of treating you like a roommate he was too polite to evict.
After, after, after.
Your chest felt hollow, carved out. Like someone had reached in and scooped out everything soft, leaving just the sharp edges behind. Your lungs forgot how to expand properly. The air felt too thick, too heavy, like breathing through water. You could feel your pulse everywhere—throat, wrists, behind your eyes—each beat a reminder that you were still here, still alive, still hurting.
"Hey." His voice from the doorway made you jump. He stood there in sleep pants and nothing else, hair mussed, looking unfairly good for someone who'd probably been up all night. "I'm making breakfast. Eggs and—"
"I can't do this anymore."
The words fell out of your mouth like stones. Heavy. Final. They surprised you as much as him, but once they were in the air, you couldn't take them back. Didn't want to.
His face did something complicated—a flash of confusion before understanding hit. You watched the color drain from his skin, leaving him gray as ash. The spatula in his hand clattered to the floor.
"What?" The word came out cracked.
You pulled your knees to your chest, made yourself small. Your body curled in on itself like it was trying to protect what was left of your heart, arms wrapped so tight around your shins you could feel your own bones. The hangover pounded behind your eyes, but this pain was worse. Necessary, but worse.
Your throat felt like it was closing, muscles constricting around words you'd swallowed for months. When you tried to speak, it came out raw, scraped: "I can't... I can't keep doing this, Bucky. I can't."
"Hold on." He moved into the room, movements jerky, uncoordinated in a way you'd never seen from him. "Just—wait. We can talk about this. We need to talk about this."
"Do we?" Your voice broke, tears already burning hot. They came sudden and violent, like your body had been storing them up for this exact moment. Your sinuses ached with the pressure of holding them back, but it was useless. They fell anyway, hot tracks down cheeks that felt numb with shock. "Because we haven't talked—really talked—in months. You sleep on the couch. You were home for three days without telling me. You can't even—"
A sob cut off the words, harsh and ugly. It ripped from somewhere deep in your chest, from that hollow place where your heart used to live. Your shoulders shook with the force of it, whole body trembling like it might fly apart.
"You can't even touch me unless I'm drunk and someone else tried to first."
"That's not—" He stopped himself, running both hands through his hair. The metal one caught the light, gleaming dully. "Fuck. Fuck, that's not fair."
"Isn't it?" The tears were falling freely now, hot and humiliating. Your nose ran, and you didn't care. Your face felt swollen already, eyes burning like someone had poured acid in them. "Tell me what's not fair about it. Tell me I'm wrong."
He couldn't. You both knew he couldn't.
"Please." The word ripped from him, raw and desperate. He dropped to his knees beside the bed, and seeing the Winter Soldier kneel like that should have meant something. Would have, once. "Baby, please. Don't do this. Not like this. Not when you're—"
"Hungover?" You laughed, but it came out like another sob, wet and broken. Your chest hitched with it, breath coming in sharp gasps that hurt. "When should I do it, then? When you're on another mission? When you're sleeping on the couch? When you're here but not really here at all?"
"I'm trying—"
"No." The word came out stronger than you felt. "You're not trying. You're hiding. You're running. You're doing everything except trying."
His hands clenched into fists on his thighs. You could see the war in him—the need to reach for you battling the fear of what his hands could do. Had done. That eternal fight between who he was and what he'd been made into.
"I love you," he said, like it was an argument.
"I know." Your voice broke completely, dissolved into something unrecognizable. The words scraped your throat raw. "That's what makes this so fucking hard. Because I love you too. I love you so much I can't breathe sometimes."
Your hand pressed against your chest again, harder this time, because it felt like your ribs might crack open from the pressure building inside. Your heartbeat was all wrong—too fast, too hard, skipping beats like it was trying to escape.
"I love you so much I've been disappearing, piece by piece, waiting for you to see me. To come back to me."
"I'm right here—"
"No, you're not!" The words exploded out of you, ripping something on the way up. Your voice went hoarse with the force of it. "You haven't been here in months! Your body's here, but you—the real you—you're gone. And I can't..."
You pressed your palms against your eyes, trying to stem the tears, but they leaked through your fingers anyway. Your whole face felt hot and tight, skin stretched too thin over too much pain.
"I can't compete with your ghosts anymore. I can't compete with your guilt. I can't love you hard enough to make you stop punishing yourself, and it's killing me to try."
When you lowered your hands, he was staring at you like you'd shot him. Like you'd reached into his chest and torn something vital loose. His face was wet—when had he started crying?
"I'll go back to therapy," he said desperately. "I'll—I'll sleep in the bed. I'll tell my therapist everything. I'll—"
"It's not about the bed." Your voice came out small, exhausted. Empty. Like you'd cried out everything inside you and now there was just echoing space. "It's not about the therapy or the missions or any of it. It's about the fact that you've already left me. You just forgot to take your body with you."
"No." He shook his head, frantic now. "No, that's not—I'm here. I'm right here. Please, sweetheart, please just—"
"You were home for three days." You said it quietly, but it hit him like a physical blow. You watched him flinch, watched his whole body recoil. "Three days, and you didn't come home. Because this isn't your home anymore, is it? It's just... a place you keep your things. A place you sometimes sleep."
"That's not true—"
"Then why didn't you come home?"
Silence.
The kind that said everything.
"I needed time," he said finally, voice wrecked. "To figure out how to fix this. How to be better. How to—"
"You can't fix this alone." The tears had slowed but not stopped, steady streams now instead of the flood. Your eyes felt raw, lids swollen. Everything hurt—face, chest, throat, heart. "That's what you've never understood. You keep trying to solve me like I'm a mission. Like if you just find the right approach, the right angle, you can complete the objective without any mess. But love is messy. It's supposed to be messy."
"I know that—"
"Do you?" You met his eyes, those blue eyes you'd fallen in love with, that still made your heart skip even now. Even through the wreckage. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you've been trying to love me without letting me love you back. And I can't... I can't do that anymore."
Something in him seemed to break then. Really break, not the careful controlled way he'd been falling apart for months. His shoulders shook, and when he reached for you, it was with both hands. Metal and flesh, no distinction, just desperate need.
"Please." His voice was raw, ruined. "Please don't leave me. I'll do anything. I'll—Christ, I'll quit the team. I'll tell everyone about us. I'll—"
"I don't want you to quit the team." You were both crying now, the space between you salt-soaked and aching. Your chest felt cracked open, everything spilling out. "I don't want you to change who you are. I just wanted... I wanted you to let me in. To trust me with more than just the good parts."
"I trust you—"
"With everything except yourself." You pulled back, even though it physically hurt to do it. Your skin felt too tight, like leaving his reach might tear you apart. "And I can't build a life with someone who treats me like I'm too fragile to handle their damage. I'm not... I'm not some civilian you need to protect, Bucky. I'm supposed to be your partner."
"You are—"
"No." You stood on shaking legs, needing distance. Needing air. Your knees almost buckled, muscles weak from crying, from hurting, from holding yourself together for so long. "I'm your secret. Your liability. Your guilt. I'm everything but your partner."
He was on his feet too now, frantic energy radiating off him in waves. "Tell me how to fix this. Tell me what to do."
"I can't." The words tasted like ash, like endings, like everything you never wanted to say. "Because you're asking the wrong question. It's not about what you do. It's about what we do. Together. And you can't... you won't let there be a together."
"That's not—"
"You sleep on the couch." Each word hurt to say, like coughing up broken glass. "You were home for three days. You missed our anniversary. You haven't touched me without apologizing in months. You love me, I know you love me, but you love me like I'm already gone. Like you're just waiting for me to figure it out too."
He stood there, chest heaving, and you could see it—the moment he realized you were right. The moment he understood that he'd been pushing you away so slowly, so carefully, that neither of you had noticed until there was nothing left to push.
"I don't know how to stop," he admitted, and it was the most honest thing he'd said in months. "I don't know how to be in love without being terrified. I don't know how to wake up next to you without checking to make sure I didn't hurt you in my sleep. I don't know how to come home without bringing the blood with me."
"I never asked you to be perfect—"
"I know." His voice broke. "I know, and that's... that's the worst part. You never asked for anything except me, and I couldn't even give you that."
The silence stretched between you, filled with everything you couldn't fix. Six months of small abandonments. Six months of loving each other wrong. Six months of him leaving without moving and you staying without being seen.
Your body felt strange, disconnected. Like you were floating above yourself, watching this happen to someone else. The tears had stopped but your face still felt wet, tacky. Your chest moved with breath but you couldn't feel it, couldn't feel anything except the yawning void where your heart used to be.
"I need to pack," you said finally. The words came out robotic, empty.
"No." But there was no fight left in it. Just despair. "Where will you go?"
"I don't know." You couldn't look at him. Couldn't watch him realize this was really happening. "My sister's, maybe. Just... somewhere that isn't here."
"This is your home—"
"No." You turned to face him one last time, memorizing the way he looked in the morning light. Beautiful and broken and everything you'd ever wanted. "It was supposed to be. But homes are where you feel safe. Where you feel seen. And I haven't felt either of those things in months."
He made a sound then, wounded and raw, and it took everything in you not to go to him. Not to take it back. Not to settle for the half-life he was offering. Your body swayed toward him against your will, muscle memory overriding logic. But you locked your knees, clenched your fists, held yourself still through sheer force of will.
"I love you," you said, because it was true. Because it would always be true. "But I can't disappear anymore. Not even for you."
You made it to the doorway before his voice stopped you.
"What if I—" He swallowed, started again. "What if I go to therapy. Really go. What if I... what if I try?"
You paused, hand on the doorframe. The wood was smooth under your palm, solid. Real. An anchor in a world that felt like it was dissolving.
"Then try. But try for you, not for me. Because I can't... I can't wait anymore, Bucky. I can't put my life on hold hoping you'll decide you deserve to be happy."
"I don't know how to be happy," he admitted.
"I know," you said softly. "That's why I have to go."
You left him standing there in the bedroom you'd shared, in the home you'd built, in the life you'd tried so hard to make work. The sound of his grief followed you—not sobs, but something worse. The quiet, breathless keen of someone watching their world collapse and knowing they'd lit the match themselves.
You packed mechanically, throwing things into bags without thought or care. Your hands moved on autopilot while your mind went somewhere else, somewhere numb and far away. He didn't try to stop you. Didn't follow. Just stood frozen in the bedroom doorway like crossing the threshold might shatter what little was left.
When you wheeled your suitcase to the door, he was there. Red-eyed, hollow, looking like a ghost of himself.
"I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. For being too broken to love you right."
"You're not broken," you said, and meant it. "You're just... lost. And I can't be your map anymore."
The door closed behind you with a soft click that sounded like an ending.
You made it to the elevator before the sobs hit, great heaving things that made your whole body shake. Your knees gave out and you sank to the floor, suitcase abandoned, hands pressed over your mouth to muffle the sounds tearing from your throat. Your stomach cramped with the force of it, muscles seizing, lungs burning.
You'd done it. You'd left. You'd saved yourself from disappearing completely.
✮ synopsis: two years of healing. that's what it takes for bucky barnes to believe he might deserve you again. two years of therapy, of learning to sleep in a bed, of discovering what james barnes wants when he's not running from who he used to be. two years apart before a leaked video of his past forces him to confront the truth.
✮ pairing: post-thunderbolts!bucky x fem!reader
✮ disclaimers (18+, minors dni): hurt/comfort, ptsd and trauma responses, references to past torture (hydra), trauma, panic attacks, explicit sexual content, dirty talk, praise kink, light dom/sub undertones (light), vibrating finger features (whoops)
✮ word count: 14k
✮ a/n: this is part 2 of 2! really recommend catching up at part 1 first 🤍
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The apartment sounded wrong.
Bucky stood in the doorway of what used to be the bedroom—their bedroom—and cataloged the absence. No soft breathing. No rustle of sheets when you turned over in sleep. No quiet hum of your phone charging on the nightstand. Just his own heartbeat, too loud in the silence, and the hum of the refrigerator that had always been too loud but he'd never fixed because you said it was "charming."
Three weeks.
Three weeks since you'd left, and he still hadn't slept in the bed.
The couch had a permanent indent now, shaped to his body like a pathetic monument to his failures. He'd been meaning to flip the cushions. Hadn't. Same way he'd been meaning to call his therapist back. Hadn't. Same way he'd been meaning to do anything other than exist in this hollow space you'd left behind.
His phone buzzed. Sam, probably. Or Raynor. Both had been calling with increasing frequency, leaving voicemails that ranged from concerned to irritated to outright threatening. He let it ring out, watching his reflection in the black screen once it went quiet. He looked like shit. Felt worse.
The mission brief sat unopened on the kitchen counter where he'd thrown it two days ago. Valentina had sent three follow-ups, each more passive-aggressive than the last. He should care. Should worry about his standing with the team, about maintaining his pardon, about all the things that used to matter before you made everything else feel like background noise.
He didn't.
The apartment still smelled like you. Your shampoo lingered in the bathroom. Your coffee mug sat in the dishwasher—the one with the chip on the handle from when he'd knocked it off the counter during a nightmare. You'd laughed it off, said it gave it character. He'd been too raw from the dream to do anything but nod, but you'd seen through him like you always did. Made him tea instead of coffee that morning, kept your voice soft, didn't ask questions.
That was the thing that gutted him most. You'd always known how to navigate his damage without making him feel damaged. Until he'd made you feel like you were drowning right alongside him.
The journal you'd given him lay on the coffee table, still in its wrapping paper. He'd taken it out of the drawer the first night, set it there like placing flowers on a grave. Couldn't bring himself to open it. Couldn't bring himself to put it away either. So it sat there, gathering dust like everything else in his life.
But try for you, not for me.
Your words echoed in the empty space, bouncing off walls that held too many memories. The place where you'd slow danced at 2 AM to no music, just the sound of rain. The kitchen counter where you'd perched while he cooked, stealing bites and making him laugh. The doorframe where you'd stood that last morning, looking so fucking tired he'd wanted to drop to his knees and beg right there.
He should have.
Instead, he'd stood frozen like the coward he was, watching you leave with grief trapped in his throat like shrapnel. Three weeks later, he could still feel it cutting him up from the inside.
His metal arm whirred softly as he flexed the fingers. A recalibration, Shuri called it. Happened when the neural pathways got overwhelmed. Fitting, really. Everything about him needed recalibrating, and he didn't know where to start.
The velvet box hidden in his tactical bag mocked him from across the room.
He'd bought it two months ago, in a moment of clarity where he thought he could push through his own bullshit long enough to do right by you. The plan had been simple: therapy, real therapy. Talk to Sam about going public. Stop letting fear drive every decision.
But clarity was a funny thing. It tended to evaporate the moment shit got real, and he'd gone right back to his patterns. Pushing you away so slowly you wouldn't notice until you were too far gone to reach.
Mission fucking accomplished.
His phone buzzed again. This time, he looked.
Raynor: Barnes. Answer your phone or I'm listing you as non-compliant. You know what that means.
He knew. Back to prison. Back to cuffs. Back to being the asset everyone was waiting to snap. Maybe that would be easier. At least in a cell, he couldn't hurt anyone else. Couldn't love anyone else into disappearing.
But even as the thought formed, he could hear your voice, sharp with frustration: "Stop. Just stop with the self-pity routine. You're not a weapon, you're a person who makes choices. So make better ones."
You'd said that after the nightmare, when he'd tried to punish himself by sleeping on the floor. Always cutting through his martyrdom complex with surgical precision.
God, he missed you. Missed you like a physical wound, like something vital had been carved out of his chest and now he was just walking around with a hole where his heart used to be.
The front door opened—Sam, using the spare key you'd insisted on giving him. Because that was the kind of person you were. The kind who thought about safety nets and backup plans and making sure the people you loved were taken care of, even when they didn't deserve it.
"Man, you look worse than the last time I saw you," Sam said, not bothering with pleasantries. "And that's saying something."
Bucky didn't respond. Couldn't find the energy to deflect or defend. Sam's eyes swept the apartment, taking in the unchanged state of everything. The pictures still on the walls—you hadn't taken those. The blanket you'd crocheted still thrown over the couch. Your favorite cereal bowl still in the dishwasher.
"You planning on turning this place into a shrine, or you actually gonna deal with your shit?"
"Leave it, Sam."
"Nah." Sam moved into the kitchen, started making coffee like he owned the place. "See, I promised someone I'd check on you. Made that promise the day she called me crying because the man she loved was treating her like a ghost while she was still right there."
That got Bucky's attention. His head snapped up. "She called you?"
"Three weeks ago. Right after she left. Want to know what she said?"
Bucky's throat felt like sandpaper. "Sam—"
"She said, 'Make sure he's okay. Make sure he eats. Make sure he doesn't do anything stupid.' Even while her heart was breaking, she was worried about you." Sam turned, fixing him with a look that could peel paint. "So I'm here. Making sure. Even though what I really want to do is kick your ass for being the kind of idiot who lets the best thing in his life walk away."
"I didn't let her—" Bucky stopped, the lie dying on his lips. Because that's exactly what he'd done. Pushed and pushed until leaving was her only option. "I couldn't... I was going to hurt her."
"You did hurt her. Just not the way you thought." Sam poured two cups of coffee, set one in front of Bucky with more force than necessary. "You're so scared of the Winter Soldier showing up that you didn't notice Bucky Barnes was the one doing the damage."
The words hit like a physical blow. Bucky gripped the mug, needing something to anchor him. The ceramic was warm against his flesh palm, but he couldn't feel it with the metal one. Never could. Just like he couldn't feel you slipping away until it was too late.
"She's better off—"
"Man, if you finish that sentence, I swear to God." Sam sat across from him, leaning forward. "You want to know what she's doing right now? She's crashing on her sister's couch. Calling in sick to work because she can't stop crying long enough to get through a shift. Jumping every time her phone rings because she thinks it might be you."
Each word was a knife between his ribs. Bucky's hands trembled around the mug.
"But she's safe," he managed. "From me. From what I am."
"What you are," Sam said slowly, like he was talking to a child, "is a man too scared of his own happiness to let himself have it. You think pushing her away kept her safe? All it did was break both your hearts. Congratulations. Mission accomplished."
Bucky flinched. Those were the same words he'd thought earlier, but hearing them out loud made them real in a way that threatened to crack him open.
"I don't know how to fix it," he admitted, the words barely above a whisper.
"Start with therapy. Real therapy, not the bullshit check-ins you've been doing." Sam pulled out his phone, scrolled through his contacts. "I've got a guy. Specializes in PTSD, combat trauma. He's good. Discrete. And he won't let you get away with the stone-cold routine."
"Sam—"
"You said you'd try. She left, and you promised you'd try. So fucking try, Buck. Because I've seen you fight through impossible shit. I've seen you come back from the dead, literally. But you're gonna let fear kill the best relationship you've ever had?"
Bucky stared into his coffee, seeing your face reflected in the dark surface. The way you'd looked that last morning—hollow, exhausted, but still so fucking beautiful it made his chest ache. You'd been disappearing for months, and he'd been too wrapped up in his own damage to notice.
No. That wasn't true. He'd noticed. He'd just been too much of a coward to stop it.
"What if it's too late?" The question came out cracked, vulnerable in a way he hadn't allowed himself to be since that morning. "What if she's done?"
Sam was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentler. "Then at least you'll know you tried. Actually tried, not this half-ass self-sabotage you've been pulling. You owe her that. You owe yourself that."
Bucky thought about the ring hidden in his tactical bag. The journal gathering dust on the coffee table. The three weeks of silence that felt like three years. You'd asked him to try for himself, not for you. Because you'd known—god, you'd always known—that he couldn't heal for someone else. It had to be for him.
"The therapist," he said finally. "What's his name?"
Sam's smile was small but real. "Dr. Keene. He's got time Thursday if you're ready."
Thursday. Four days away. Four days to figure out how to walk into an office and crack himself open. Four days to stop running from the man he was so afraid of being.
"Yeah," Bucky said, and the word felt like the first true thing he'd said in weeks. "Yeah, okay."
Sam stayed for another hour, filling the silence with updates about the team, about Sarah and the boys. Normal things. Human things. The kind of life Bucky had told himself he couldn't have, didn't deserve.
After Sam left, Bucky sat in the too-quiet apartment and finally, finally opened the journal.
Your handwriting on the first page made his throat tight:
For all the stories you haven't told yet. You deserve to be more than your worst days. Always.
He picked up a pen, hand shaking slightly, and wrote the first words:
I fell in love with you on a Tuesday.
It wasn't much. It wasn't nearly enough. But it was true, and it was a start.
And maybe, if he could fill enough pages with truth, he'd figure out how to stop running from the only person who'd ever made him want to stay.
~ three weeks prior ~
The transport back to New York had been a special kind of hell.
Not the physical restraints—he'd worn worse, been treated worse. The titanium cuffs were almost gentle compared to HYDRA's methods. No, it was Walker's eyes that made him want to disappear. That mix of pity and disgust, the barely concealed I told you so hovering on his lips. It was Yelena going deadly quiet in the quinjet, which was somehow worse than her usual barbs. It was the way even Val—Val who'd seen every shade of monster there was—looked at him like a liability that needed containing.
Three bodies. Three ex-HYDRA scientists who'd been running a knockoff super soldier program out of a defunct pharmaceutical lab in Warsaw. The mission had been simple: infiltrate, gather intel, extract. No termination protocol. No weapons free. Just get in, get the data, get out.
He'd gotten in just fine.
Then one of them had smiled at him. Just a little quirk of the lips, and said, "Gotovy vypolnit' prikaz?" Ready to comply?
Not the words. Never the words again—Shuri had made sure of that. But something in the pattern, the cadence, the way the Russian rolled off his tongue like he'd been gargling broken glass. Something that bypassed all of Bucky's careful control and went straight to the place where the Soldier lived.
He'd come to with blood on his hands and Walker screaming in his ear.
The containment cell in the Tower's sub-basement was medical-grade, meant for enhanced individuals who posed a threat to themselves or others. White walls, no windows, temperature controlled to keep him comfortable while they figured out what the fuck had happened. He sat on the single bench, still in his tactical gear—they'd been too wary to let him change—and stared at his hands.
Flesh and metal. Both capable of equal damage.
His phone had been confiscated, but he could see it through the observation window, lighting up on the desk. Your ringtone—he'd assigned you something soft, something that wouldn't jar him awake from nightmares. It played three times in the first hour.
"You want me to answer that?" The tech on duty—Hollander, decent guy, three kids—gestured at the phone.
"No."
What was he supposed to say? Hey baby, I'm back in the city but currently in lockdown because I snapped and killed three people with my bare hands. How was your day?
Dr. Cho ran every scan imaginable. Blood work, brain scans, neural mapping. Looking for any trace of external manipulation, any sign that someone had found another way in. The results were horrifyingly clean. No drugs, no tech, no secret programming. Just Bucky Barnes, losing control because someone spoke Russian with the right inflection.
"It's a trauma response," Cho explained, professional but not unkind. "Like a soldier diving for cover when a car backfires. Your neural pathways remember the pattern, even if the trigger itself is gone."
"So I'm not safe." It wasn't a question.
"You're not unsafe," she corrected carefully. "But we should monitor—"
"How long?"
"Forty-eight hours minimum. Protocol."
Two days. Two days in a white box while you thought he was somewhere in Warsaw, doing hero work. Two days of your calls going unanswered because how could he explain this? How could he tell you that after all the work, all the fixing, he was still a weapon waiting to go off?
The door opened on day two. Yelena walked in like she owned the place. She dragged a chair across the floor, the screech of metal on concrete deliberately obnoxious, and sat backwards on it like they were having a casual chat.
"So," she said, examining her nails. "You had fun party in Warsaw."
"Go away, Belova."
"Cannot." She pulled out a bag of chips from her jacket—where the hell had she been hiding those?—and tore it open. "Valentina says I must watch you. Make sure you don't go—how she say—'full murder ‘bot again."
"I didn't—" He stopped. Because he had. Three bodies worth of had.
"You know what I think?" She crunched loudly, deliberately. "I think you are, eh, what is word... drama queen."
Bucky's head snapped up. "Excuse me?"
"You hear Russian, you freak out, you kill people." She waved a chip dismissively. "Is very dramatic. Like soap opera but with more blood."
"That's not—"
"'Oh no, someone spoke language of my tragic past, now I must murder.'" Her accent made the mockery somehow worse. "Is like me killing everyone who mentions Red Room. Would be very exhausting. Also, very messy."
"It's not the same thing."
"No?" She tilted her head, bird-like. "So trauma is competition now? Yours is special flavor?"
He glared at her. She popped another chip in her mouth, unbothered.
"You know what your problem is, Barnes?"
"Go ahead, enlighten me."
"You think you are only one with ghosts." She leaned forward, suddenly serious. "News flash—we all have them. Difference is, some of us learn to live with ghosts instead of letting ghosts live us."
"That's not—"
"Who calls you?" She nodded at his phone, still lighting up periodically. "Every twenty minutes, same ringtone. Soft. Like lullaby. Girlfriend?"
His silence was answer enough.
"Ah." She sat back, crunching thoughtfully. "And she does not know you are here, playing prisoner princess in tower."
"It's not her problem."
"Bozhe moi, you really are American again. Everything is 'not problem,' 'is fine,' 'don't worry about it.'" She switched to a terrible American accent for the last part. "Is exhausting, this pretending."
"I'm not pretending—"
"Your phone rings, and you look like someone is pulling out fingernails." She studied him with those too-sharp eyes. "But sure. Is not her problem."
Another call. The ringtone seemed louder in the silence that followed.
"You know what Natasha told me once?" Yelena's voice had gone softer, which was somehow worse than her mockery. "She said hardest part of having someone is letting them see you. All of you. Even ugly parts. Especially ugly parts."
"Natasha never—"
"Had someone? No. But she wanted to." She stood, leaving the chip bag on the chair. "Is why I think she would be very annoyed with you right now. All this self-pity, very boring. She hated boring."
She moved toward the door, then paused. "Your girlfriend—she is normal person? Not spy, not Avenger?"
He nodded reluctantly.
"Then she chose you knowing what you are, yes? Winter Soldier, metal arm, whole package?" She didn't wait for an answer. "So maybe—just maybe—she is stronger than you think. Maybe she doesn't need protecting. Maybe what she needs is boyfriend who answers fucking phone."
She knocked on the door to be let out, then turned back. "Oh, and Barnes? Next time someone speaks Russian at you and you feel like killing? Try counting to ten first. In English. Is what I do when Walker talks."
The door closed behind her, leaving Bucky alone with her words rattling around in his skull. His phone lit up again. This time, he could see the preview of your text:
Just tell me you're alive. Please.
Twenty-four hours later, when they finally released him past midnight, he had a dozen voicemails he couldn't bring himself to listen to. Not yet. Not when he was standing outside the Tower in yesterday's tactical gear, still smelling like violence and metal and shame.
He took a cab back to the apartment—couldn't call it home, not when you weren't there—and saw the anniversary dinner he'd missed. The gift waiting on the coffee table. The careful way you'd tried to make something special out of another night alone.
Three days. Three days of choosing his shame over your peace of mind. Three days of letting you think he might be dead rather than admit he was exactly what he'd always feared—a killer waiting for the right words to flip the switch.
When you finally called from that bar, drunk and scared and needing him, he'd already been drowning in guilt since Warsaw. The way you'd said you missed him, the texts that got progressively sadder, the mention of some asshole touching you—it had all crashed together into perfect clarity.
He'd been protecting himself. Not you. Never you.
Because protecting you would have meant answering the phone. Would have meant trusting you with the ugly truth. Would have meant believing—really believing—that you were strong enough to handle it.
Maybe she doesn't need protecting. Maybe what she needs is boyfriend who answers fucking phone.
Yelena's words echoed as he drove through empty streets toward you, already knowing he was probably too late. Already knowing that three days of silence had probably cost him everything.
But he went anyway. Because after three days of being a coward, showing up was the least he could do.
Even if it was too little, too late.
~ 2 years later ~
The therapist's office smelled like leather and lemon furniture polish.
Two years in, and Bucky still noticed it every Thursday at 3 PM, still cataloged exits (two), potential weapons (letter opener, paperweight, his own hands), and the exact number of steps from his chair to the door (seven).
"You're doing it again," Dr. Keene observed, not unkindly.
"Doing what?"
"The risk assessment. You're safe here, James."
James. Two years, and he still wasn't used to anyone but you calling him that. But you hadn't called him anything in 730 days. Not that he was counting.
(He was absolutely counting.)
His metal fingers flexed involuntarily, the plates realigning with soft mechanical whispers. A phantom pain shot through his left shoulder—psychosomatic, Keene had explained. His body remembering trauma that technically belonged to a different arm. The original one, the flesh and bone one, long gone. Sometimes he still felt it, especially on cold mornings. Ghost sensations of fingers that had once known how to hold a rifle steady, play cards, touch a dame's cheek without fearing what came next.
"Hard habit to break," he said, settling deeper into the chair that had molded to his body over countless sessions. The leather creaked, and his spine automatically cataloged the sound—not danger, just furniture. Another lesson in rewriting instinct. "But I'm working on it."
That was the thing about therapy—the real kind, not the court-mandated check-ins he'd half-assed his way through before. It was work. Brutal, exhausting work that left him feeling flayed open and reassembled wrong. Some days he walked out of this office feeling like he'd gone ten rounds with Steve in his prime. Bruised in places that didn't show, aching in ways that had nothing to do with muscle or bone.
"Tell me about this week," Keene prompted. The man had the patience of a saint and the perception of a sniper. Salt-and-pepper beard, kind eyes that missed nothing, hands that never moved suddenly. Bucky had hated him for the first six months. Now he just mostly tolerated him, which was progress.
"Good week. Mostly." The words came out measured, careful. His throat felt tight—always did in this room, like his body was allergic to vulnerability. "Taught a self-defense class at the community center. Helped Sam with a mission in Lagos—clean extraction, no casualties. Didn't have any nightmares until Wednesday."
"What happened Wednesday?"
Your birthday.
The thought hit him like a punch to the solar plexus, made his ribs feel too tight around his lungs. He'd seen the photos your sister posted—you laughing at some rooftop bar, wearing a red dress that made his mouth go dry even through a phone screen. New friends, new life. A guy's arm around your shoulders in one shot, casual and possessive in a way that made Bucky's metal hand whir anxiously before he caught himself.
"Just a date," he said. "Nothing significant."
Keene hummed, that particular sound that meant he saw right through the deflection but would circle back to it later. The man was like a bloodhound for emotional avoidance.
"How are the anger management exercises working?"
"Haven't punched anyone in eight months." The words tasted bitter, defensive. His jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth ache. "Though Walker makes it tempting."
"John Walker is still part of your team?"
"Unfortunately." Bucky shifted, the leather protesting beneath him. His body felt too big for the chair suddenly, restless energy crawling under his skin like ants. "But I'm... managing it. The breathing exercises help. The grounding techniques. When he starts his shit, I just—" He paused, forced his shoulders down from where they'd crept up toward his ears. "I count to ten in Romanian now instead of Russian."
That got a small smile. "Why Romanian?"
The question sat heavy in the air. Bucky's chest went tight, that familiar sensation of memories pressing against the inside of his skull, demanding attention. "Because Russian makes me think of..."
Ready to comply.
The words echoed even unspoken, carved into neural pathways that would never fully heal. He could still taste the rubber of the mouth guard, feel the electricity racing through his veins like liquid fire, smell the ozone and burnt flesh and—
"Things I'd rather not think about," he finished, blinking hard to dispel the sense memory. His hands had clenched into fists. He forced them open, finger by finger. "Romanian just reminds me of hiding. Which wasn't great, but it was mine, you know? My choice to hide. My choice to run."
"That's significant progress, James. Reclaiming agency over your associations."
Agency. Everything came back to agency in this room. The agency HYDRA stole with voltage and scalpels and words that rewrote his DNA. The agency he'd surrendered to fear, convinced that distance was the same as protection. The agency he'd taken away from others—from you—in the name of keeping them safe.
"Can we talk about the journal?"
Bucky's entire body locked up, muscles tensing like he was preparing for a blow. The journal you'd given him sat on his desk at home, leather worn soft from two years of handling. Filled with his chicken-scratch handwriting, pages warped from tears he'd never admit to shedding. Letters to you he'd never send. Memories he was trying to preserve before they got lost in the fog of everything else. Apologies that would never be enough.
"What about it?"
"You mentioned last week that you've been writing letters to—"
"I know what I mentioned." Too sharp. He forced his shoulders to relax, unclenched his jaw. The taste of copper in his mouth meant he'd bitten his cheek. Again. "Sorry. I just... those are private."
"I'm not asking you to share them. I'm asking how it feels to write them."
How did it feel? Like performing surgery on himself without anesthesia. Like talking to a ghost that haunted his apartment, his dreams, his every waking moment. Like keeping you alive in the only way he had left—through words you'd never read, apologies you'd never hear, love letters to someone who'd moved on.
"Necessary," he said finally.
Keene waited. The man had turned waiting into an art form, comfortable with silence in a way that made Bucky want to crawl out of his skin.
"I know she's moved on," Bucky continued, the words scraping his throat raw. His metal thumb pressed against his thigh, grinding in small circles that would leave bruises later. "I know it's been two years. I know she's probably—"
Happy. In love. Getting married to someone who didn't need a manual for basic human interaction. Someone who could sleep through the night without waking up screaming. Someone who could touch her without checking for exit wounds.
"But I can't seem to stop. Writing to her, I mean. It's like... if I stop, it makes it final."
"And you're not ready for it to be final?"
"I'm never going to be ready for it to be final." The admission ripped something loose in his chest, left him feeling hollow and too full at the same time. "But that's my problem to deal with. Not hers. Not anymore."
They talked through the rest of the session about his progress. The VA meetings where he sat in circles with other broken soldiers, swapping war stories and coping mechanisms. The kids at the community center who'd gone from flinching at his arm to hanging off it like monkey bars, their fearlessness both heartbreaking and healing. The way he could walk past a flower shop now without feeling like his lungs were collapsing, though the smell of roses still made him nauseous.
"Same time next week?" Keene asked as they wrapped up.
"Yeah." Bucky stood, knees creaking in protest. His body might heal fast, but it still kept score. Old injuries that should have killed him ached in the rain. Phantom pains from wounds that had healed decades ago. The left shoulder, where metal met flesh, a constant reminder of what had been taken and what had been given back wrong.
The walk back to his apartment—new place, Bed-Stuy, far enough from your shared space that he didn't see ghosts on every corner—took him past the farmer's market. He bought plums without having a panic attack, which felt like a victory. The vendor smiled at him, genuine and warm, and he managed to smile back without feeling like a fraud.
Bought flowers too, white tulips that reminded him of nothing in particular. No associations, no memories, just simple beauty that he could practice caring for without the weight of history.
His apartment was sparse but lived-in. Books on the shelves—philosophy, poetry, the science fiction novels you'd gotten him hooked on. Dog-eared and worn, read and reread during sleepless nights when your absence felt like a physical wound. A couch that had never been slept on, because he used the bed now like a real person, even when the mattress felt too soft and his body craved the punishing hardness of the floor. Plants by the window that were miraculously still alive after six months—a small jungle of green that required daily attention, routine, care. The journal on his desk, closed but waiting, like a patient confessor.
He made dinner—actual dinner, not just protein bars and whatever he could eat standing over the sink. Grilled chicken, roasted vegetables, rice. Sat at the table like a functioning adult, used both knife and fork, didn't shovel food into his mouth like someone might take it away. Did the dishes immediately instead of letting them pile up, the warm water soothing on his flesh hand, the metal one impervious as always.
The gym was less crowded in the evenings. He preferred it that way—fewer eyes tracking his movements, fewer people trying not to stare at the arm. He sparred with Sam, who'd gotten better at reading Bucky's moods over the past two years. Knew when to push and when to pull back, when Bucky needed to go hard and when he needed to be reminded that he wasn't fighting for his life anymore.
"You're getting soft," Sam said, panting after Bucky pulled a punch that would've laid him out a year ago. Sweat dripped down his face, soaked through his shirt. Even holding back, Bucky hit like a freight train.
"Maybe." Bucky unwrapped his hands, flexing the metal fingers. Shuri had added new features in the last upgrade—pressure sensors that helped him gauge his grip, temperature regulators that meant he didn't burn or freeze anyone he touched. Small improvements that made him feel less like a weapon and more like a man with a very expensive prosthetic. "Or maybe I'm just getting better at not being an asshole."
"Nah, still an asshole. Just a self-aware one now."
They grabbed beer after, sitting on the roof of Sam's building. The city sprawled below them, lights like stars that had fallen and gotten stuck. Brooklyn glittered in the distance, and Bucky's chest tightened at the sight. Somewhere out there, you were living your life. Maybe in the same apartment, maybe somewhere new. Maybe alone, maybe with—
He cut that thought off at the knees.
"Sarah's asking about Thanksgiving," Sam said carefully. Too carefully.
"I'll be there."
"You said that last year."
"Last year was... complicated."
Last year, he'd been convinced you might show up at Sam's door. That you'd be there laughing with Sarah in the kitchen, flour in your hair and wine staining your lips purple. That he'd have to sit across from you at dinner and pretend his bones weren't trying to crawl out of his skin from wanting to touch you.
He'd spent Thanksgiving on his fire escape instead, eating Chinese takeout straight from the container and writing letters he'd never send.
I'm thankful for the time we had, he'd written, three beers deep and maudlin. Even if I ruined it. Even if it hurt. Even if I dream about you every night and wake up forgetting you're gone.
"It's been two years, Buck."
"I'm aware." The words came out sharper than intended. His body tensed, ready for a fight that wasn't coming.
"Maybe it's time to—"
"Sam." A warning, low and final. The metal hand clenched around his beer bottle, not enough to shatter but enough to make the glass groan.
"I'm just saying. You've done the work. You're in a good place. Maybe it's time to reach out."
"She's moved on." The words tasted like ash, bitter and choking. "I check— I know she's doing well. That's all that matters."
It was a lie, and they both knew it. He did more than check. He had a Google alert for your name, scrolled through your sister's Instagram with the dedication of a detective working a cold case. Knew you'd gotten a promotion at work, that you'd adopted a cat named Alpine, that you'd taken up pottery classes on Thursdays.
(Thursdays. His therapy day. Like even your hobbies were avoiding him.)
Sam was quiet for a long moment, the kind of quiet that meant he was about to say something Bucky didn't want to hear. "You know she asks about you sometimes. When she calls Sarah."
Everything in Bucky went still. The city noise faded to white static, his heartbeat loud in his ears. "What?"
"Just... how you're doing. If you're okay. If you're happy."
If you're happy. Like happiness was a switch he could flip, a state he could achieve instead of something he glimpsed in peripheral vision before it vanished. He was better. He was functional. He was surviving.
But happy?
Happy was your laugh in the morning, coffee brewing while you danced to music only you could hear. Happy was your hand in his, unafraid of the metal and what it meant. Happy was two years gone and not coming back.
"What does Sarah tell her?"
"The truth. That you're doing better. That you're healing. That you—" Sam hesitated, and Bucky's stomach dropped. "That you still love her."
The beer bottle shattered.
Glass and foam exploded everywhere, shards glittering in the low light. The metal hand recalibrated, servo motors whirring as they adjusted to the sudden loss of resistance. Blood welled on his flesh palm where a shard had caught him, the wound already beginning to close.
"Shit. Sorry." He stared at the mess, mind blank. Two years of therapy, of anger management, of learning to control his strength, undone by your name and the word love in the same sentence.
"Yeah, that's about what I figured." Sam handed him a napkin, not even fazed. They'd been through worse. "Look, I'm not saying grand gestures or whatever. I'm just saying... maybe she deserves to know you're better. Maybe you both deserve some closure."
Closure. Like you could close a wound that had become part of your anatomy. Like you could stitch shut something that had fundamentally altered your DNA. His metal hand still tingled with phantom sensations, memories of holding you that the arm itself had never experienced. The flesh remembered, and somehow that was worse.
"I'll think about it," Bucky lied.
But the universe, it seemed, had other plans.
Bucky woke to his secure phone buzzing like an angry hornet. 47 missed calls, texts flooding in faster than he could read them. Sam's name, multiple times. Sharon. Yelena. Valentina. Even Walker, which was never good. His blood went cold, mind immediately cataloging possibilities—compromise, attack, someone hurt, someone dead, you—
"What is it?" he answered Sam's callback, already reaching for his go-bag. His voice came out steady, all business, even as his heart hammered against his ribs. "Who's compromised?"
"Buck..." Sam's voice was strange. Careful in a way that made Bucky's skin crawl. "You need to see the news. But—shit, don't watch it alone, okay? Come to my place. We'll—"
But Bucky was already pulling up news sites, his metal hand gripping the phone too tight. The screen cracked under his thumb as the headline hit him like a sniper round:
LEAKED: CLASSIFIED FOOTAGE SHOWS DECADES OF WINTER SOLDIER TORTURE
The blood in his veins turned to ice water. His vision tunneled, edges going dark. No. No, no, no—
The video was everywhere. Every major news outlet, every social media platform. Forty minutes of pure, unfiltered hell—footage HYDRA had apparently kept as some sick training material. Evidence of their success in breaking him down to base code and rebuilding him wrong.
His thumb hovered over the play button. He didn't want to see. Already knew what it contained, had lived it, bore the scars both visible and not. But there was a sick compulsion, a need to know what the world was seeing. What you were seeing.
The first frame made bile rise in his throat.
There he was, young and screaming. The footage was grainy, black and white at first—old film reels from the early days, when HYDRA still bothered documenting their experiments like proud scientists. Strapped to that chair that still featured in his nightmares, metal restraints cutting into skin that hadn't yet learned to stop feeling. They'd stopped bothering with anesthetic after the first few sessions—the serum healed him too fast, made pain relief pointless. More efficient to let him scream until his throat gave out.
The video quality evolved as it progressed through the decades. Jerky 8mm film giving way to steadier 16mm, black and white bleeding into washed-out color. By the sixties, the footage was clearer, the horror rendered in technicolor precision. Multiple angles capturing every convulsion, every plea. His younger self begging in Russian, then English, then wordless animal sounds as electricity rewrote his neural pathways. The technicians taking notes, adjusting voltage with clinical detachment. One checking his watch, bored.
He watched them attach the metal arm for the first time. No anesthetic for that either. Just a bone saw and cruel efficiency, his screams echoing off concrete walls. The smell—God, he could still smell it. Burnt flesh and ozone, metal cauterizing meat. They'd had to restart his heart twice during that procedure. The video caught that too, his body convulsing on the table, eyes rolled back to show only whites.
Three minutes in, and he was on his knees in his apartment, retching. Nothing came up but bile and the ghost of a sandwich from last night. His body shook, muscles remembering trauma decades old. The metal arm sparked, recalibrating frantically as his nervous system went haywire.
The video kept playing. He couldn't look away.
Year after year compressed into minutes. The chair. The words. The wipes that left him seizing, foam tinged pink with blood frothing from his lips. Training that was just sanctioned torture—bones broken and healed and broken again until he learned to move through pain like it was weather. They made him fight other Winter Soldiers, made him kill them bare-handed to prove his superiority. One had begged. The video caught that too, caught Bucky—no, the Asset—snapping his neck without hesitation.
But the worst parts were the moments between. When the programming cracked just enough to let James Barnes bleed through. Confused, terrified, trying to remember his own name. In one clip, strapped to the chair and waiting for the next session, he'd been reciting something under his breath. The audio picked it up clearly:
"Barnes, James Buchanan. Sergeant. 32557038. Barnes, James Buchanan..."
Over and over, like a prayer. Like a lifeline. Until the technician hit the switch and the electricity burned even that away, left him empty and ready to be filled with purpose.
By the end, the Asset barely looked human. Eyes empty, responding only to commands. They'd point, and he'd kill. They'd speak the words, and he'd comply. No hesitation, no recognition, no trace of the man who'd laughed with Steve in Brooklyn and danced with pretty girls and had a favorite sandwich at the deli on the corner.
The video ended with a mission briefing. December 16, 1991. The Asset nodding, accepting orders to kill Howard and Maria Stark without a flicker of emotion.
Bucky stayed on his knees for a long time after it finished, shaking. His phone rang and rang—Sam, probably, or one of his therapists. He couldn't answer. Couldn't form words past the scream trapped behind his teeth.
This wasn't the sanitized version from his pardon hearings. This wasn't redacted files and clinical language that let people maintain distance. This was the raw footage. This was what had been done to him, to the person he'd been, to the man who'd just wanted to serve his country and come home.
Forty minutes of torture, and that was just what they'd chosen to document. Seventy years of this, and the world was seeing it over morning coffee. Commenting on it. Sharing it. Debating whether he deserved sympathy or a bullet, whether this made him more victim or more monster.
An hour passed. Maybe two. Time went strange when your past was being broadcast to the world. His apartment felt too small, too exposed, like the walls might collapse under the weight of all those watching eyes. He'd turned off his phone eventually, couldn't stand the constant buzzing. Everyone had seen it. Everyone knew exactly what had been done to him, what he'd been reduced to.
The knock at his door was soft. So soft he almost missed it over the sound of his own ragged breathing. He didn't move at first, couldn't seem to make his legs work. The knock came again, barely there, and then—
"Bucky?"
Your voice through the door, small and wrecked.
He was on his feet before conscious thought caught up, body moving on pure instinct.
Two years of staying away, of respecting boundaries, of keeping his distance—all of it evaporated at the sound of you saying his name like that.
He yanked the door open and you were there. Hair wild, face swollen from crying, wearing pajama pants and a sweater that didn't match. Like you'd thrown on whatever was closest and come to him.
Like after two years of silence, you'd seen that video and your first instinct was to come to him.
You looked at him for one suspended moment—taking in his red eyes, the tremor in his hands, the way he was barely holding himself together—and then you were moving.
You crashed into him with enough force to knock the breath from his lungs. Your arms went around his neck and you were sobbing—great, body-shaking sobs that he felt in his bones. He caught you on instinct, metal arm around your waist, flesh hand cradling the back of your head. Your feet left the ground as he held you, held you like he'd wanted to for 731 days.
You were here. In his arms. Shaking apart, but here.
He'd imagined holding you again a thousand times. In those imaginings, it was always different—softer, maybe. Definitely not with you crying so hard you could barely breathe, not with his own eyes burning and chest cracking open. But even like this—especially like this—he hadn't felt this complete since the last time he'd held you. Like the world had finally stopped spinning wrong. Like his lungs remembered how to take in air.
You didn't say anything at first. Couldn't, probably, around the sobs. He just held you, one hand stroking your hair while you shook apart in his arms. You were warm and solid and real, and you still fit against him like you'd been carved from the same stone. He pressed his face into your hair, breathed you in—floral shampoo and something uniquely you that made his knees weak.
"I've got you," he murmured, the words coming out rough. "I've got you, sweetheart. It's okay."
But that just made you cry harder, fingers digging into his shoulders like you were afraid he'd disappear. He maneuvered you both inside, kicking the door shut without letting go. Muscle memory had him moving to the couch, sitting down with you still wrapped around him. You ended up in his lap, face buried in his neck, and he just held on while you fell apart.
Time went liquid. Could have been minutes or hours that you cried, and he just sat there, hand running up and down your spine in the same soothing pattern he'd used to use when you had nightmares. Your tears soaked through his shirt, and he could feel you trying to get closer, like you could crawl inside his chest if you just held on tight enough.
Eventually, the sobs slowed to hiccupping breaths. You pulled back slightly, just enough to look at him, and Christ—your eyes were swollen nearly shut, face blotchy and tear-stained. You looked absolutely wrecked.
"There she is," he murmured, thumb coming up to brush tears from your cheek. His hand moved without permission, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear with the kind of casual intimacy he'd lost the right to two years ago. "Hi, pretty girl."
Fresh tears welled in your eyes. "I couldn't—I tried to watch it all but I—I c-couldn't—" Your voice cracked, broke completely. You had to take several shuddering breaths before trying again. "Twenty minutes. That's all I could—and you lived it, Bucky, you actually—oh god—"
"Hey." He caught your face in his hands, thumbs sweeping away the new tears. "It's okay. It was a long time ago."
"It's not—" A sob cut you off. You pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes, shoulders shaking. "It's not okay! N-nothing about that is okay! I knew—fuck, everyone knows what happened to you, in theory. The trial, the pardons, all of it's p-public record. But seeing it—"
Your breath hitched, caught, turned into another sob. "Actually s-seeing what they—the chair, Bucky. The way you... you screamed. The way you b-begged them to stop and they just—they just—"
"Breathe," he said softly, pulling you back against his chest when your breathing went too shallow, too fast. "Come on, sweetheart. Match me. In and out."
You pressed your ear to his chest, and he breathed slow and steady until you started to match his rhythm. His hand found your hair again, stroking through the tangles. Your whole body trembled against him, little aftershocks of grief.
"Like you weren't even h-human," you whispered against his shirt. "Like you were just... parts to be rearranged. And the early footage, you were so—you were just a kid, basically. Twenty-six and sc-screaming and—"
Another wave of sobs took you. He held you through it, jaw clenched against his own emotions.
This was why he'd never told you the details. Why he'd kept it vague—'conditioning' and 'programming' sounded so much cleaner than the reality.
"I'm being—" You pulled back suddenly, laughing through your tears but there was no humor in it. "God, I'm being ridiculous. You're the one who—who lived through it and here I am, cr-crying all over you, making you comfort me through your trauma—"
"Stop." His voice came out sharper than intended. He gentled his grip on your face, made sure you were looking at him. "Don't do that. Don't apologize for caring. Don't apologize for being human."
"But I—"
"No." He was firm on this. "You think I'd rather you saw that and felt nothing? You think I'd prefer indifference?"
"I just—" Your face crumpled again. "I asked you. Remember? About the n-nightmares. About what they did. And you said—you said 'standard Hydra shit' and I let it go. I should have pushed. Should have—"
"I wouldn't have told you." Simple truth. "I wasn't ready. Couldn't even say the words out loud in therapy, let alone to you."
"But you were so alone." The words came out broken, wet. "For d-decades, you were alone. They hurt you and broke you and put you back together wrong and you couldn't even—you couldn't even remember who you were supposed to be. And then you c-came back and I—"
You pressed a hand to your mouth, muffling another sob. "I left you alone again. You pushed me away because you were sc-scared and instead of fighting for you, I just—I left. I left you alone."
"You didn't leave me alone." He pulled your hand away from your mouth, laced their fingers together. "You left because I made it impossible to stay. Because I was too much of a coward to let you see all of me."
"You're not a c-coward." Fresh tears tracked down your cheeks. "You survived that. You survived decades of that and you're still—you're still kind. Still good. Still—" A hiccup interrupted you. "Still the best man I've ever known."
"Sweetheart—"
"I missed you," you said, the words tumbling out between sobs. "Every day. Every f-fucking day. Even when I was angry. Even when I tried to date other people. Even when I—" Your breath hitched. "I couldn't get you out of my head. Out of my heart. Like you were carved into my bones and I couldn't—couldn't scrape you out no matter how hard I tried."
"I know." His own voice cracked. He felt raw, exposed. "Me too. Every fucking day."
"I'm sorry." You were crying harder now, barely able to get words out. "I'm s-sorry I didn't fight harder. Sorry I wasn't strong enough to—to stay and make you see that you were worth fighting for."
"Hey, no." He pulled you closer, pressed his forehead to yours. "No apologies. Not for protecting yourself. Not for having boundaries. Never for that."
"But—"
"We both fucked up," he said quietly. He hardly meant it, he never blamed you, but it seemed to be what you needed to hear. "We both could have done better. But we're here now."
"Yeah," you whispered, voice small and wrecked. "We're here now."
You stayed like that for a long moment, breathing each other's air, existing in the same space for the first time in two years. Your body still shook with aftershocks, little tremors and hiccups that broke his heart.
"I should—" You started to pull back. "I should go. This isn't—you don't need me falling apart on your—"
"Stay." The word ripped out of him, desperate and raw. "Please. Just—you can take the bed. I'll take the couch. Not like before. Not—" He swallowed hard. "Just stay. Let me know you're safe. Let me—let me take care of you for once."
You searched his face, and he watched you see it—all the longing, all the fear, all the love he'd never learned how to hide.
"Okay," you whispered, and started crying again. "Okay."
Neither of you moved for a while after that. You stayed curled in his lap, his arms around you, while the city lights painted patterns on the walls. Every so often, a fresh wave of tears would take you, and he'd hold you through it, murmuring nonsense into your hair.
"I watched them put the arm on," you said at one point, voice hoarse. "No anesthetic. You were awake and they just—they just cut—"
"I know," he said when you couldn't finish. "I know, baby. It's over now."
"It's not over. You still dream about it. Still have days where you can't—" Another sob. "I should have been there. Should have helped somehow—"
"You did help." He pressed a kiss to your warm temple, tasted salt. "You helped by being the first person in years to look at me like I was worth saving. Even if I didn't know how to let you."
Later, he'd give you clothes to sleep in—soft things that would smell like him. You'd brush your teeth side by side, and he'd pretend his heart wasn't breaking at how right it felt. He'd make up the bed with fresh sheets while you changed, and when you emerged drowning in his henley, he'd have to look away.
When you paused in the bedroom doorway, looking back at him with swollen eyes and something fragile in your expression, he'd be ready.
"Thank you," you'd say, voice still rough from crying. "For letting me stay. For—for being here."
"Always," he'd reply, and mean it with every atom of his being.
You'd smile then—wobbly and complicated—and close the door. He'd make up the couch and lie there listening to you breathe in the next room, marveling at the miracle of your presence.
But for tonight, you were here. Safe in his space, under his protection, breathing the same air. After 731 days of nothing, it was everything.
It was enough.
For now, it was enough.
The couch was too short for his frame, but after two years of therapy, Bucky had learned to stop punishing himself with discomfort. He'd gotten good at making himself comfortable in spaces that didn't quite fit. Still, sleep came in fragments—twenty minutes here, an hour there. His body kept jerking awake, convinced he'd dreamed the whole thing. That you weren't really in his bed, wearing his clothes, breathing his air.
Around 3 AM, he heard the bedroom door creak open. Soft footsteps on hardwood, hesitant but moving closer. He opened his eyes to find you standing there in the darkness, silhouetted by the city lights filtering through the windows. You'd put his henley back on, and it hung to mid-thigh, making you look smaller than you were.
"Baby?" The endearment slipped out before he could catch it, voice rough with sleep and surprise. He squinted, trying to read your expression in the dark. "You okay? Need something?"
You didn't answer. Just stood there for a moment, arms wrapped around yourself, before moving toward him with purpose. He sat up, ready to give you the couch if you couldn't sleep in the bed, ready to move to the floor if that's what you needed. But you didn't ask him to move.
Instead, you crawled right into his space, onto the couch that was definitely not built for two people. He accepted you immediately, arms opening on instinct as you fitted yourself against him—chest to chest, your face buried in his neck. The couch groaned under the combined weight, but held.
"Hey," he murmured, pulling the blanket up over both of you. His hand found your hair, still messy from sleep. "Bad dream?"
You shook your head against his throat. Your arms went around him, holding on tight, and he could feel the way your breath hitched. Not crying, but close. He understood without explanation—you'd woken up remembering. The video, the torture, the decades of pain compressed into forty minutes of footage. You'd needed to touch him, to feel him solid and whole and here.
"I've got you," he whispered into your hair. "I'm okay. I'm right here."
You made a small sound and pressed closer, like you could protect him retroactively from things that had already happened. One of your hands found the juncture where metal met flesh, fingers tracing the scars there with devastating gentleness. He tensed for a moment—old habit—then forced himself to relax. To let you touch. To let you see.
They stayed like that until dawn crept through the windows, dozing in and out of sleep. Every time he surfaced, you were there, heartbeat against his chest, breath warm on his neck. Real. Present. A miracle he still couldn't quite believe.
When morning came properly, neither of them acknowledged how naturally they'd fitted together in sleep. How your leg had hooked over his hip, how his metal hand had splayed possessively across your lower back. They extracted themselves carefully, both pretending not to notice the reluctance in the separation.
"Coffee?" he offered, voice still gravelly.
"Tea, if you have it." You stretched, his henley riding up to reveal a strip of skin that made his brain short-circuit. "Coffee makes me jittery these days."
These days. Two years of changes, small evolutions he hadn't been there to witness. He turned to the kitchen to hide the way that knowledge sat heavy in his chest.
"Still take it with honey?"
"Yeah." You padded after him, bare feet on hardwood.
He busied himself with the ritual of morning—filling the kettle, finding the good honey (wildflower, local, from the farmers market you'd always loved), selecting eggs from the fridge. You perched on one of the bar stools at the counter, watching him move through his space with an expression he couldn't quite read.
"You cook now," you observed.
"Turns out eating actual food is part of that whole 'taking care of yourself' thing Keene keeps harping on about." He cracked eggs into a bowl, whisking them with practiced efficiency. "Who knew?"
"Your therapist sounds like a smart man."
"Don't let him hear you say that. His ego's big enough already." He glanced at you, taking in the sleep-rumpled hair, the way his clothes draped over your frame. You looked soft and accessible and untouchable all at once. "I've got some sweatpants that might fit better than the boxers, if you want—"
"These are fine." You tugged at the hem of the henley self-consciously. "If that's... if you don't mind."
"I don't mind." Understatement of the century. Seeing you in his clothes was doing something to his brain that felt both ancient and brand new. "Never minded."
Silence settled between them as he cooked, but it wasn't uncomfortable. You sipped your tea and watched him work, occasionally commenting on the changes in his apartment—the art on the walls, the plants that hadn't died, the general sense that someone actually lived here instead of just existing.
He was plating the omelets when you spotted it. The journal, sitting on the counter where he'd left it last night. Your whole body stilled, mug pausing halfway to your lips.
"Oh," you said quietly. "You use it."
Understatement of the century.
"Yeah." He set your plate in front of you, then leaned back against the opposite counter, giving you space. "Every day, pretty much."
You reached out, fingers hovering over the worn leather cover. "What do you write about?"
"Everything. Nothing." He shrugged, aiming for casual and missing by miles. "Therapy stuff. Memories I want to keep. Things I should have said."
"Letters," you said, not quite a question. "Sam mentioned letters, once."
"Yeah."
You were still staring at the journal like it might bite. Or like it might break your heart.
"You can look, if you want." The words came out steadier than he felt. "It's... a lot of it's to you anyway."
Your eyes snapped to his. "You don't have to—"
"I know. But we're doing honesty now, right? Being real?" He gestured to the journal. "That's about as real as I get."
You hesitated for another moment, then pulled the journal toward you. Your hands shook slightly as you opened it, and he had to look away. Focused on his coffee instead of the way your face changed as you read his messy handwriting, years of thoughts spilled onto paper.
He knew what you were seeing. Pages of apologies, observations, dreams he'd documented so he wouldn't forget them. Lists of things he wanted to tell you—your laugh sounds different in my memory than it did in real life. I bought plums at the market and almost called you. I still can't sleep on the left side of the bed.
The poetry was in there too, terrible attempts at capturing feelings too big for prose. He'd tried to write about the way you used to hum while cooking, how you'd steal his socks and act surprised when he'd find you wearing them. How loving you had felt like drowning and breathing all at once.
You were crying again, silent tears sliding down your cheeks as you read. Occasionally you'd make a small sound—half-laugh, half-sob—at something particularly pathetic he'd written. He wanted to take the journal back, spare you both this vulnerability. Instead, he gripped his mug tighter and waited.
Finally, you looked up. Your eyes were red but clear, seeing him in that way you'd always had. Like you could look past all the armor and see straight to the soft, desperate heart of him.
"Two years," you said softly. "You wrote to me for two years."
"Seven hundred and thirty-one days." He set down his mug, needing his hands free. Needing to move. "I know how it looks. Obsessive. Unhealthy, probably. Keene says it's—"
"Human," you interrupted. "It looks human."
You stood, rounding the counter until you were in his space. Close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in your eyes, count the tears still clinging to your lashes. You reached up slowly, telegraphing your movement, and he realized what you were doing. Giving him time to pull away, to redirect.
He didn't.
Your hand touched his face, and for the first time in two years, he didn't flinch. Didn't turn to offer the other cheek, the flesh side. You cupped his jaw with careful fingers, thumb brushing over stubble, and he let his eyes close. Let himself have this moment of being touched without apology.
"I wrote too," you admitted. "Not in a journal. In my phone. Little notes I'd never send. Anger, mostly, at first. Then just... observations. Things I wanted to tell you. Dreams I had where you were still there when I woke up."
He opened his eyes to find you closer still. Your other hand came up, and now you were holding his face between your palms like something precious. Something worth keeping safe.
"Can I—" you started, then stopped. Took a breath. "I want to kiss you. Is that—would that be okay?"
Instead of answering, he brought his metal hand up to cradle your cheek. Watched your eyes flutter closed as you leaned into the touch, no fear or hesitation. Just trust. Just love, somehow still intact after everything.
"Always," he murmured, and closed the distance.
The first press of lips was careful, tentative. A question asked and answered in the space of a breath. You made a small sound and pressed closer, and suddenly he was seventeen and eighty and every age in between, kissing you for the first time and the thousandth time all at once.
Your lips were chapped from crying, and you tasted like honey tea and salt. He'd never tasted anything better. One of your hands slid into his hair and he groaned, the sound swallowed between your mouths. Two years of missing this, of waking up reaching for you, and here you were. Soft and warm and real.
The kiss deepened, something desperate creeping in at the edges. He walked you backward until you hit the counter, lifted you onto it without breaking contact. You gasped against his mouth and wrapped your legs around his waist, pulling him closer, and his brain went white-static at the feeling.
He'd always loved kissing. Loved the intimacy of it, the way it could feel more vulnerable than sex. Loved how you'd melt against him, how you'd make those little sounds when he found the right angle, the right pressure. He kissed you like he was relearning a language he'd never truly forgotten, muscle memory and discovery all tangled together.
When you pulled back to breathe, he trailed his mouth down your jaw, found that spot below your ear that had always made you shiver. Still did. Your hands tightened in his hair, and he smiled against your throat. Some things didn't change.
"Bucky," you breathed, and he had to kiss you again just for the way you said his name. Like a prayer, like a promise, like coming home.
His hands found your waist, rucking up the henley to find bare skin. You were warm and sleep-soft under his palms, and when he spread his fingers wide, he could span most of your back. The metal hand was gentle, sensors calibrated to exactly the right pressure. No hiding, no hesitation. Just touch.
You shifted against him, and he became suddenly, devastatingly aware that you were wearing his boxers and nothing else under them. His hand slid to your thigh, fingers brushing under the fabric, and you made a sound that short-circuited several major brain functions.
"Wait," you gasped, pulling back slightly. Your lips were swollen, eyes dark, and it took every ounce of control not to dive back in. "Are we—what are we doing here?"
"I don't know," he admitted, resting his forehead against yours. Both of you were breathing hard, bodies lined up in ways that made thinking difficult. "What do you want us to be doing?"
"I want—" You stopped, seemed to gather yourself. Your hands were still in his hair, nails scratching lightly at his scalp in a way that made him want to purr. "I want to do this right this time. I want to be sure we're not just... falling back into old patterns."
"This doesn't feel like old patterns." His thumb stroked along your ribs, feeling the expansion of your breath. "This feels new. Better. Like we might actually know what we're doing this time."
"Do we though?" But you were smiling, small and real. "Because I'm sitting on your kitchen counter at 8 AM, wearing your clothes, and I'm about five seconds from doing something really stupid."
"What kind of stupid?"
"The kind where I drag you back to that couch and show you exactly how much I missed you."
Jesus. He pressed his face into your neck, trying to get his bearings. "That doesn't sound stupid. That sounds—"
"Like we're skipping steps again." Your fingers gentled in his hair, stroking now instead of gripping. "Like we're using physical stuff to avoid talking about the hard stuff."
She was right. Of course she was right. Two years of therapy for both of them, and here they were, ready to fall back into bed without addressing any of the things that had driven them apart.
"Okay," he said, pulling back to look at you. It took effort—every instinct screaming to stay close, to take what you were offering—but he managed it. "Okay. You're right. We should talk."
"Such a responsible adult," you teased, but there was affection in it. Love, even. "Therapy’s really done a number on you."
"You have no idea."
He helped you down from the counter, both of you adjusting clothes and trying to pretend the kitchen wasn't charged with enough sexual tension to power Brooklyn. You settled back at the counter with your rapidly cooling breakfast, and he took the stool next to you this time. Close enough that your knees touched. Small victories.
"So," you said, cutting into your omelet. "Talk. What do we do now?"
It was a good question. The question, really. Two years of growth, of therapy, of learning to be whole people instead of broken halves. They couldn't just slot back together and pretend nothing had happened. But they couldn't pretend they weren't still inevitably drawn to each other either.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I know I want to try. Real try, not the half-assed thing I was doing before. I want to tell you about the hard stuff. I want to trust you with all of it, not just the parts I think you can handle. I want..." He paused, gathered courage. "I want to be the partner you deserved two years ago. If you'll let me."
You set down your fork, turned to face him fully. "I want that too. But I need—we both need—to be whole people first. Not trying to fix each other or complete each other or whatever codependent shit we were doing before."
"Agreed." He risked reaching out, covering your hand with his metal one. You turned your palm up, interlacing the fingers, and something in his chest eased. "So what does that look like?"
"I think..." You squeezed his hand, thinking. "I think it looks like taking things slow. Like actually dating this time, not just falling into living together because it's easier. Like being honest about the scary stuff, even when our brains are telling us to protect each other."
"Therapy homework," he said with a grimace. "Keene's gonna love this."
"Mine too. She's been saying I need to practice healthy boundaries for months."
"So... boundaries." The word felt foreign in his mouth when it came to you. But necessary. "What do you need?"
You considered this, thumb stroking over his metal knuckles absently. "Time. Space to keep being my own person. Regular check-ins about how we're feeling, even when—especially when—it's uncomfortable. And..." You looked at him directly. "I need you to trust me. Really trust me. With the missions that go bad, with the nightmares, with the days when you can barely get out of bed. All of it."
"That's gonna be hard," he admitted.
"I know."
"But I want to try."
"I know that too."
They sat there for a moment, hands linked, breakfast cooling between them. It wasn't the passionate reconciliation his body wanted. Wasn't the dramatic merger of souls that movies promised. It was quieter than that. More solid. Real in a way that all their previous attempts hadn't been.
"So," he said eventually. "Want to go on a date with me?"
You laughed, bright and surprised. "A date?"
"Yeah. Friday night. I'll pick you up and everything. We can do the whole first date thing properly this time."
"We already slept together on our actual first date."
"Which is why we're doing it better this time." He brought your joined hands to his lips, kissing your knuckles. "What do you say?"
"I say..." You pretended to consider, but your smile gave you away. "Pick me up at seven. And Barnes? Bring flowers."
"Yes ma'am."
You stayed for another hour, talking through logistics and boundaries and all the unsexy parts of rebuilding a relationship. He drove you home on his bike—you still remembered exactly how to move with him through traffic—and walked you to your door like a gentleman.
"Friday," you said, and it sounded like a promise.
"Friday," he agreed.
You went up on your toes and kissed his cheek, soft and brief. Then you were gone, leaving him standing on your stoop with his hand pressed to his face like a teenager.
He made it back to his apartment before the full weight of it hit him. You were back. Not in his bed, not in his life fully, but back in his orbit. They had a date. A real date, with parameters and boundaries and all the things Keene had been telling him he needed.
He picked up his phone, scrolled to his therapist's contact.
"I need an emergency session," he said when Keene answered. "Something happened."
"Are you safe?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm—I'm good. Really good. That's kind of the problem."
A pause. "This is about her, isn't it?"
"How did you—"
"James. We've been working together for two years. I know your 'she's back in my life' voice."
"I have a 'she's back in my life' voice?"
"You have several. Which one is this—the panicked one or the cautiously optimistic one?"
Bucky considered, thinking about your hand in his, the way you'd kissed him like you had all the time in the world.
"Cautiously optimistic," he decided.
"Then I'll see you Thursday at our regular time. And James? Good job on reaching out instead of spiraling."
"Thanks."
"Oh, and James? Flowers. Don't forget flowers."
"Already on it."
He hung up and stared at his journal, still open on the counter where you'd left it. Evidence of two years of missing you, wanting you, learning to be someone who could deserve you.
Time to put all that work to use.
He had a date to plan.
~ six months later ~
The couch had become sacred ground.
Not in the way it used to be—a monument to his cowardice, the place he'd slept to avoid your bed. Now it held different memories. Better ones. The afternoon he'd spent relearning your body. The night he'd finally told you about Warsaw, really told you, while you held his hand and didn't flinch. The morning he'd made love to you slow and quiet while rain streaked the windows.
Tonight, you were draped across his lap, wearing one of his t-shirts and not much else, pretending to watch whatever movie he'd put on. He wasn't paying attention either. Too focused on the way you kept shifting against him, the little sighs you made when his fingers traced patterns on your bare thigh.
"You're not watching," you accused, but your voice was breathy, distracted.
"Neither are you." His metal hand slid higher, fingertips brushing the edge of your underwear. The sensors registered heat, dampness, the way your muscles tensed in anticipation. "Got something more interesting in mind?"
You turned in his lap to face him, straddling his thighs with a flexibility that still made his brain short-circuit. "Maybe."
"Maybe?" He gripped your hips, pulled you flush against him. You were already wet—he could feel it through the thin fabric between you both, and it made his cock twitch with interest. "Gonna need more than maybe, sweetheart."
Instead of answering, you rocked against him, a slow roll of your hips that made you both catch your breath. Your hands braced on his shoulders, fingers digging in just enough to ground you both.
"Missed you today," you said, and it wasn't what he expected. Your voice was soft, honest in that way that still sometimes caught him off guard.
"I was only gone eight hours."
"I know." Another roll of your hips, more deliberate this time. "Still missed you."
Something in his chest went tight and warm. Two years back together, and you still missed him when he was gone. Still wanted him when he came home. Still looked at him like he was something worth keeping.
And in his bedside drawer, hidden beneath old mission reports and spare magazines, sat a small velvet box that had been waiting three years. The one he'd bought drunk on love and convinced he'd found forever. Even through your separation, through all the therapy and growth and pain, he'd never been able to throw it away.
Now it waited for the right moment—not rushing this time, not desperate. Just certain.
"Show me," he said, voice rougher than intended. "Show me how much."
Your eyes went dark at the command. You loved this—when he got demanding, when he stopped treating you like glass. It had taken months to learn your signals, to trust that you'd tell him if something was too much. Now he could read your body like his favorite book, knew exactly when to push and when to ease back.
He slid his metal hand between you both, pressing the heel against you through your underwear. You gasped, hips jerking forward, and he smiled. "That's it. Take what you need."
You ground against his hand with increasing desperation, chasing friction. He watched your face, cataloging every expression—the way your brows drew together when something felt particularly good, how your mouth fell open when he increased the pressure. Beautiful. Fucking perfect.
"Not enough," you whimpered, movements becoming frantic. "Need—"
"I know what you need." He pulled your underwear aside with his flesh hand, metal fingers finding your clit immediately. The temperature difference made you cry out—cool metal against overheated flesh. "Always so wet for me. So ready. Been thinking about this all day too, haven't you?"
You nodded frantically, beyond words as he circled your clit with devastating precision. The upgraded sensors were incredible, letting him feel every twitch, every pulse of need. He could tell you were already close, wound tight from anticipation.
"Want to try something," he said, slowing his movements just enough to make you whine. "Trust me?"
"Always." No hesitation, and that trust still humbled him.
He shifted his hand, two metal fingers sliding through your wetness before pressing inside. You were soaked, taking them easily, and the sound you made went straight to his cock. But that wasn't the best part—the best part was activating the subtle vibration function Shuri had installed for "therapeutic purposes."
"Oh fuck—" Your whole body went rigid, then melted against him. "Bucky, what—"
"Upgrade." He curled his fingers, finding that spot that made you see stars while the vibrations worked you from the inside. "Good?"
You couldn't answer, too lost in sensation as he worked you higher. Your wetness coated his fingers, dripping down to his palm, and he had to grit his teeth against the urge to forget the foreplay and just bury himself inside you.
"Look at you," he murmured, free hand tangling in your hair to keep you facing him. "Taking it so well. So perfect for me. Can feel how close you are—clenching around my fingers, trembling in my lap. You gonna come for me?"
You nodded desperately, movements erratic as you rode his hand. He increased the vibration, pressed his thumb to your clit, and watched you shatter. Your orgasm hit hard, back arching as you cried out. He worked you through it, drawing it out until you were shaking and grabbing his wrist.
"Too much," you gasped, but he didn't stop. Just gentled his movements, eased the vibrations down to a subtle hum.
"You can take it." He kissed your neck, felt your pulse racing under his lips. "Know you can. Always so good for me, aren't you? Can give me one more."
You made a broken sound as he resumed his rhythm, oversensitive and overwhelmed. Your whole body trembled, caught between pulling away and pressing closer. He loved you like this—completely undone, trusting him to take care of you even when it bordered on too much.
"That's my girl," he praised as fresh wetness coated his fingers. "Getting even wetter. Body knows what it needs even when your brain's all fuzzy. Just feel, sweetheart. Let me make you feel good."
The second orgasm built slower, your body fighting it even as it climbed. He could tell the exact moment you gave in, stopped resisting and just let it happen. You went limp against him, only his hand in your hair keeping you upright as you came again, quieter this time but no less intense.
"Beautiful," he breathed, finally easing his fingers out. They were soaked, glistening in the low light. "So fucking beautiful."
You made a small sound when he lifted you, rearranging you both so you were on your back on the couch, him kneeling between your spread thighs. Your underwear was ruined, twisted to the side and soaked through. He pulled them off, tossed them somewhere behind him.
"Look at this pretty cunt," he said, running a finger through your folds. You twitched, sensitive, and he smiled. "All swollen and wet. Can see how hard you came—still clenching around nothing, still dripping for me."
"Please," you whispered, the first word you'd managed in minutes.
"Please what?" He freed his cock, groaning at the relief. He was painfully hard, had been since you first climbed in his lap. "Tell me what you want."
"You." Your hands reached for him, shaky but insistent. "Want you inside me. Need to feel you."
"Yeah?" He rubbed the head of his cock through your wetness, coating himself. You were furnace-hot, slick enough that he had to grit his teeth for control. "Think you can take it? Already came twice, might be too sensitive..."
"I can take it." There was steel under the desperation in your voice. His girl, always stronger than you looked. "Please, Bucky. Need you."
He pushed inside in one smooth thrust, and you both groaned. You were molten around him, cunt fluttering with aftershocks that made him see stars. Perfect. Like you were made for him, shaped by him, existing just for this.
"Fuck," he breathed, having to stay still or risk ending this embarrassingly fast. "Feel so good, baby. So wet and tight and perfect. Can feel you trying to pull me deeper. Greedy little thing, aren't you?"
You clenched around him deliberately, and he had to press his forehead to your shoulder for composure. Two years, and you still affected him like this. Still made him feel desperate and possessive and completely fucking gone for you.
He started to move, slow and deep, watching your face for signs of discomfort. But you just gazed up at him with trust and heat and something that looked a lot like awe. Like he was something worth looking at that way, even after everything.
"Love fucking you like this," he told you, picking up the pace. "Love watching you take my cock. Love how wet you get, how you stretch around me. Could live inside this sweet cunt."
You moaned, arching into him. Your hands clutched at his shoulders, his arms, anywhere you could reach. He caught them, pinned them above your head with his metal hand. The position made you clench around him, and he smiled.
"Like that? Like being held down?" He thrust harder, deeper, watching your tits bounce with the force. "Like knowing you can't move, can't do anything but take what I give you?"
You nodded frantically, and he could feel fresh wetness where you were joined. Perfect. His perfect girl, who trusted him with your pleasure, who let him take control because you knew he'd take care of you.
"Gonna come again," he told you, rhythm getting rougher. "Gonna fill this pretty cunt up. Mark you from the inside, make sure you feel me all day tomorrow. Would you like that? Walking around full of my come, knowing who you belong to?"
"Yes," you gasped, and he could feel you getting close again. "Yes, please, yours—"
"Mine," he agreed, and reached down to rub your clit with his flesh hand. "All mine. This cunt, this body, this perfect fucking girl. Mine to fuck, mine to fill, mine to take care of."
You came with a cry, convulsing around him. The feeling of your cunt gripping him, trying to milk his cock, sent him over the edge. He buried himself deep and came hard, grinding against you as he filled you.
"That's it," he groaned, still pulsing inside you. "Take it all. Such a good girl, taking everything I give you."
You stayed locked together as you caught your breath, both trembling with aftershocks. He released your wrists, smoothing his hands over the marks he'd left. Not bruises—he was always careful about pressure—but evidence of his grip that would fade within the hour.
"Okay?" he asked, pressing kisses to your temple.
You hummed contentment, boneless and sated beneath him. "More than okay. That was..."
"Yeah." He knew what you meant. The intensity, the connection, the way it felt like coming home every single time.
He eased out carefully, both of you hissing at the sensitivity. His come immediately started leaking out of you, and something primal in him loved the sight. Marked. His.
"Stay there," he ordered, heading to the bathroom for a washcloth.
When he returned, you'd curled onto your side, looking soft and fucked out and perfect. He cleaned you gently, carefully, smiling when you twitched at the contact.
"Sensitive?"
"Mmm. Good sensitive." You caught his hand, brought it to your lips. "Love you."
"Love you too." The words came easy now, no hesitation or fear. Just truth.
He gathered you up, carrying you to bed properly. Tomorrow you'd deal with the real world—missions and therapy and all the work that went into building a life together. But tonight, you had this. Each other. A love that had survived separation and learned how to stay.
"Hey," you mumbled against his chest as he settled you both under the covers.
"Yeah?"
"We're really doing this, aren't we? Making it work?"
He pressed a kiss to your hair, pulled you closer. "Yeah, sweetheart. We really are."
And for the first time in your relationship, he thought of that ring in his dresser without a doubt in his mind.
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pairing: Congresman!Bucky Barnes x assistant!female!reader
summary: it's hard to focus on your work when your boss is hell bent on teasing you every chance he gets.
warnings: mdni, porn with the slightest plot, public sex (?), verbal degradation (slut and whore), oral (f and m receiving), pussy and face slapping, piv sex, shameless use of 'sir' and please, orgasm denial, begging, not proofread, lmk if I missed something!
word count: 2.5k (of pure smut)
a/n: inspired by these beautifully enticing photos of Sebastian.
you were sitting in front of Bucky, listing off all of the upcoming meetings in the Washington DC sessions while the two of you prepared for the next one. you could feel his annoyance grow with each bullet pointer that you read aloud from your tablet.
"is that all?" his voice dripped with sarcasm and frustration.
"I know it's a lot, but we prepared for this, remember?" you reminded him.
"yeah yeah, c'mere," he held your hand, walking you over to his side of the desk. "we can't have one night off from this craziness?"
"I'm afraid not," you frowned down at your tablet again. Bucky hated that damn thing, always taking your attention away from him. "we're scheduled for dinners or parties with other members on almost all nights."
he rolled his eyes. "I'm sure nobody would miss me, doll." his hands dropped down to your waist, pulling you between his legs.
"we can't bail, James," the use of his first name dictated your seriousness. "this is your last year and you said you won't be standing for re-elections-"
"all the more reason to bail."
"so that means," you ignored his quip. "we should go out with pleasant goodbyes. these people might be annoying but they're powerful. they can help us out in future."
he sighed, his forehead resting on your stomach. "fine."
your hands tangled in his hair, soothing his worries. "you'll be okay. you've faced greater dangers than boring old people."
"you'd be surprised at how much easier everything else is in comparison," he mumbled, kissing your abdomen through the silk top.
you rolled your eyes at his dramatics. "behave, Bucky. we don't have time for even a quickie. we should get going."
he pouted up at you. "you're killing me, doll."
~
as his assistant, it was your job to take diligent notes and make sure he had the right pointers to speak. but, no matter how much you tried, it was almost inevitable to get distracted by him at least once during the meetings. his crisp white shirt, the suit jacket fitting his frame, his fingers playing with the straps of his watch. how could you possibly focus on some diplomatic statement you were sure was written by AI, when your boss - and secret lover - looked like a Greek god next to you?
"like what you see?" he whispered, eyebrows quirked.
your eyes snapped forward again with a sharp inhale. but you had opened a gate you weren't ready for. his hand sneaked on your thigh, pressing his fingers up the hem of your skirt, dancing around your core.
"Bucky," you hissed over the speaker who was currently looking ahead at the panel, everyone's eyes focused there.
"shh," his hand was clenched between your thighs, enveloped in your heat. when you squirmed, he gripped your thigh, demanding rather than instructing you to stop your movements. once you setttled down, he resumed his exploration again, finding a growing wet spot on your panties that he rubbed.
he continued his torture for some time before retreating when the speaker backed away and the room's attention frayed.
"hope you got all that," he leaned closer to you, as if inspecting your notebook which was blank. "dripping over my hand is not what I pay you for, slut."
"yes, sir," you mumbled, focusing on maintaining your composure.
out of the corner of your eyes, you saw him licking the slight wetness from his fingers casually and quickly, breaking your composure once again.
~
you remained frustrated and snapped at everyone else for the rest of the day, the stickiness between your thighs a crude reminder of Bucky and his teasing.
"slow down, doll," his velvet voice reached your ears, your lecture to the party planners about guest security dying on your tongue. his hand reached up on your shoulder, squeezing gently. "let them breathe."
you glared back at him. "they were gonna let the media run around freely on the grounds if not for me."
"and I'm sure they appreciate that," he glanced over the team in front of you both with raised eyhebrows. when they nodded and apologised, he continued. "but now that that's settled, how about we make our rounds?"
"fine," you sighed, nodding back at the people. "dismissed."
Bucky's chuckle fill your ears again. you turned to him, straightening his slightly crooked tie while keeping your eyes on his chest. he looked hot, which wasn't new, but it added to your sexual frustration.
"you look ravishing," he complimented, eyes sweeping the floor length blue gown that hugged you like a second skin. "makes me wanna push you into the nearest empty room."
"just a couple of hours of socialising," you mumbled, meeting his eyes. "then I'll let you do whatever you want with me."
his eyes lit up, a new determination in his look. "yeah?"
you nodded.
"I thought we didn't have time for even a quickie?"
"that was before you touched me in a room full of politicians."
~
Bucky was motivated and he completed his round of greeting and discussions before the hour was even up, and he even managed to score a few favours that can be banked some time in the future, should he ever need them.
you were impressed.
his smug smirk sent heat to your core. "can we leave now?"
"just until the speeches are done."
he groaned, leaning against the bar and ordering a drink for himself. "you're killing me, doll." he repeated the words from earlier.
"I'll make up for it," you sipped your cocktail, eyes scanning the room for any potential conversation but when you found none, you looked back at him. you gave him a crooked grin, letting him know your intentions.
"when I first met you," he pressed his cheek to yours, whispering directly in your ear. "I never would've guessed you would be such a needy slut."
you closed your eyes for a moment, letting the pleasure spread throughout your body. "you got a special talent for bringing out the best in me, sir."
he groaned quietly.
you stayed in the ballroom for another half hour, ensuring all the social commitments were ticked off for the night. when you nodded in approval, Bucky all but dragged you out and up to the hotel room, thankful the venue was in the same building where you both were staying.
he pushed you against the elevator wall once the doors closed, stealing your breath with a hungry kiss, his lips melding with yours and his tongue exploring your mouth. your moans were swallowed up by him, his hands wandering all over your body.
when the elevator dinged again, both of you were breathing heavily, catching your breath and trying not to stumble as your hurried to his room.
he opened the door in record time, pushing you against the nearest surface again to devour your mouth. this time his hands slipped the straps of your dress down your shoulder, opening the zipper on the back, and pooling your dress on the floor. when he looked down, he froze at the sight in front of him.
you, clad in just a bra and his favourite heels.
"dirty fucking whore," he growled.
"you ruined my panties," your mouth was wide and your face innocent, but your eyes betrayed your lust. "what was I supposed to do?"
he did not answer, hand gripping the back of your neck to pull you in another kiss and his other hand worked on removing you of your bra, too. leaving you naked - except the heels - while he remained fully clothed.
he pushed you towards the couch, bending you over the back of it in one motion. "spread your legs and ass."
you obeyed his commands, hands behind you as you spread open for him, your glistening folds shining in the low light from the windows.
his fingers skimmed the curve of your ass before retreating and falling down against your cunt. you yelped at the unexpected slap.
"that's for being a naughtly girl."
another slap landed on your clit, the pleasure mixing with the pain in a delicious swirl.
"and that's for rejecting me from fucking this pussy for the last few days."
you tried to answer, tried to defend yourself, but before you could go past we did not have ti- another slap, this one harder than the other two, was delivered on your pussy. "what was that?"
"nothing, sir." you mumbled.
"that's what I thought." he stepped back, removing your hands from your body and holding them together on your lower back. "now be a good girl and stay still."
you heard him go down his knees, his breath fawning over your core. he did not make you wait long and instead, licked from your clit to your pussy. he started sucking and licking, occasionally fucking you with his tongue.
your whimpers and moans grew with each passing minute, trying not to squirm or ride his face. every time you did, his hands pinned you to the sofa tighter, stilling his own movements as he waited for you to stop.
you were near the edge, the coil in your stomach tight. "I- I am gonna-"
he suddenly detached from you, standing again almost immediately, which left you speechless.
he tugged you up by your hands, rubbing his hands over arms to soothe the ache.
"what..." you struggled to form words.
"gonna make you beg for it tonight," he said. "gotta remind you who you belong to."
"I belong to you," you immediately said. he pulled you to the bedroom, removing his jacket and shoes as he sat you down on the bed.
"that's good, but you can do better," he said, stroking your cheek. "show me."
you unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants and he unbuttoned his shirt. soon, he was as naked as you, towering above you with a controlled demeanor.
you took his heavy member in youe hands, stroking it a few times and once it was hard enough, you licked the tip, slowly circling down his entire length, letting him enter you fully, pushing against the back of your throat.
his hands wrapped in your hair, using it to hold you in place as he started thrusting. you loved when he used your face. you continued to look up at him, watching his face contort from the pleasure he took from you. your hands moved on their own accord down to your thighs, and he noticed.
he pulled out of you with a pop, before slapping your cheek. "did I give you permission to touch what's mine?"
you shook your head. "no, sir."
"you want a punishment?"
"no, sir," though you craved his creative punishments, you were too needy tonight. "I'm sorry, sir. it won't happen again."
"better not, or I'll leave you on the edge for the entire week." he threatened.
your eyes widened. "it won't happen again, sir." you babbled.
"relax, doll," he stroked your cheek, soothing the ache. "I'm gonna fuck you and let you cum, but only if you behave. understand?"
"yes sir."
"good girl. now open up."
your lips fell open as wide as they could, tongue sticking out. he pushed inside you again, a slower pace this time as he thrusted in deep motions. you choked on his length a couple of times, but he knew you could take it and started to fasten his pace. your hands were on his thighs, grounding you.
"fuck, baby," he growled, eyes shut, head thrown back. "you were made for me." the muscles under your fingers were tight under you and his grunts were louder now. "gonna make me cum just from your mouth. fuck. you're so perfect for me, my perfect little slut."
you moaned around his cock, the vibrations sending his pleasure into overdrive. he twitched in your mouth before exploding, his seed coating your throat and mouth. he moaned, a low and beautiful sound that you craved to hear every day.
"fuck, that's a good girl. swallow for me, baby." he stroked your cheek once he's out of your mouth. you swallow each drop, not wasting a single one, while maintaining eye contact. "how did I get so lucky to have you?"
your hands roam around his chest again, the need in your eyes on full display. "please."
"what do you want?"
"please, fuck me, sir. I've been good."
"have you?"
you nodded, tears springing in your eyes at the frustration that throbbed between your legs. tears that only made Bucky's cock hard again.
"please, sir. I need your cock so bad."
"baby," he wiped a tear from the corner of your eye. "I've been teasing you too much, have I?"
you pouted up at him. "please, no more."
"but you look so beautiful when you beg for me, doll." he said, pushing you back to the bed, your legs dangling off it. "in the centre. I'll give you what you want. keep the heels on."
you scrambled up, settling with your legs wide open, allowing him to rest between them, his cock resting on your oversensitive pussy.
he kissed you once, slow and deep.
"you've been a good girl, taking me so well, begging for my cock so beautifully."
his hand pushed your leg up on his shoulder as he sat on his knees. he pushed the tip of his cock against your waiting hole, pushing inside. sounds of pleasure escaped both of you, the only other sound in the room being the wet squelch as his member pushed deeper inside you, each inch bringing you new pleasure.
"you feel so good," he groaned. "so tight for me."
"Bucky," you moaned loud, which earned a jarsh smack on your clit. "sir." you corrected.
"don't forget your place, slut."
you nodded, whimpering and needy.
once he was sheathed inside you fully, he gave you a moment to adjust to his length before moving. his thrusts were fast and hard, your leg bouncing up on his shoulder with each movement. the angle allowed him to reach deep inside your body, hitting your g-spot easily. you were seeing stars soon enough.
"can I cum?" you whimpered. "I'm so close."
"not yet," he panted. "you're gonna cum with me."
"please," you moaned.
"soon, baby, just a little longer." he groaned. "keep squeezing me like that, baby, fuck."
you tried to hold your orgasm, wanting to obey his commands, and soon enough, his muscles were tensing, too, your hands cupping his cheeks to look into his eyes.
"cum for me, baby."
you didn't need to be told twice.
both of you came together, passionate sounds and rocking hips as your orgasms dictated your movements. once you rode out gour pleasure, your body was left with a sweaty, tingling sensation. pleasure coursed through your veins as your body relaxed, Bucky's body falling on top of you, a comfortable weight, his head finding the crook of your neck.
"I gotta tease you more in public if this is the reward." he said after a few moments.
"absolutely not," you chided. "this was not a reward for that behaviour, Bucky."
"well, doll, it wasn't exactly a punishment." his grin was infectious with boyish charm.
you shook your head and rolled your eyes, but a smile still donned your face. "Bucky," you sighed.
"yes, doll?" it was his turn to act innocent.
"whatever, I know I can't stop you once you've made your mind." you conceded.
"you're damn right."
he kissed your lips, a sweet press of your lips together, your smiles mingling together.
"the rest of the week seems bearable now."
you couldn't help but hum in agreement, letting his weight, feel, and scent pull you towards rest. you slept after cleaning up, legs tangled beneath the sheets, his arms circling around your waist, yours settling on his forearms. "g'night," you yawned.
"good night, doll." he kissed your head.
well, I hope you liked it! likes, comments, and reblogs are greatly appreciated <3
summary | bucky lets his relationship slip into the background for the sake of duty and public image. but when the distance starts to break them, he realizes he’ll do anything to fight for the love he almost lost.
tags | (18+) MDNI, smut, unprotected sex, p in v, THUNDERBOLTS* SPOILERS, fluff, angst, hurt/comfort, soft!bucky, miscommunication, established relationship, mentions of mental health/trauma
a/n | I enjoyed writing this so much omg. an apology for my last angst fest fic, based on this request. just two emotionally constipated dumbasses in love.
likes comments and reblogs are much appreciated ✨✨
ᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀʟɪsᴛ
The first thing you felt was the drag of his mouth along your collarbone—hot, wet, unhurried.
Then his body—solid, heavy, familiar—settled deeper between your thighs, pinning you to the sheets like he belonged there.
Like he knew he belonged there.
“Fuck,” Bucky rasped, hips rolling in slow, punishing thrusts that pulled gasps from your throat. “You feel so good—always feel so fuckin’ good…”
Your legs tightened around his waist, heels pressing into the curve of his ass, urging him deeper.
“You gonna come for me, sweetheart?” he panted, forehead resting against yours. “Come on, I know you’re close.”
You could barely form words. Everything was heat and friction and the slow climb to a peak that had been building for days. He’d been gone—missions, briefings, whatever other bullshit Val had piled on him—and you hadn’t had this, hadn’t had him, in far too long.
Now, you were starving for him.
And from the way he was panting against your mouth, he was just as gone for you.
Bucky’s rhythm faltered for a second—just a split moment—as his cock pulsed deep inside you and he moaned, low and wrecked.
Then—bzzzt.
The phone on the nightstand lit up.
The sound sliced through the heat like cold water.
You groaned, your hands clawing into his shoulders, nails dragging down the flex of his back. “Ignore it,” you muttered, voice thick.
He nodded without looking, mouth already on your throat again. “Wasn’t gonna stop.”
Bzzzt.
He hesitated. You felt the tension in his hips, the shift in his weight. The way his hand twitched like he wanted to grab it—like his fucking conditioning made him twitch toward the sound.
“James,” you growled, pulling his face back to yours. “Focus.”
He smirked—flushed, wild-eyed, strands of hair clinging to his sweat-damp forehead. “Yes, ma’am.”
He rocked back into you, deeper this time, harder. You gasped, arching into him, fingernails biting into his arms.
“You’re such a good girl,” he grunted, “always take me so—”
Bzzzt.
The sound felt louder now.
Persistent.
You tensed beneath him, and he slowed—just a fraction. His head dropped into the crook of your neck, his breath hot and ragged.
You whispered, dangerously low, “James Buchanan Barnes, don’t you dare.”
He paused. Exhaled. “I won’t,” he murmured.
And he didn’t.
Not when you kissed him. Not when your legs tightened around him again, pulling him back into that rhythm. Not when your hips met his in frantic, greedy movement, the sound of skin on skin filling the room.
But then—
Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt.
Buzzing. Relentless.
Like it knew it was ruining something.
His rhythm faltered again. Slower this time. His breath hitched.
And you could see it—feel it—his mind slipping.
“Two seconds, baby,” he whispered, barely coherent.
Then he reached.
You froze. Staring.
He reached for the phone.
“For fuck’s sake—” You shoved his chest, hard enough to make him fall back slightly, the weight of him disappearing as you slid out from under him.
“What?” he asked, dazed, already answering the call. “Where’re you going?”
You grabbed your robe from the edge of the bed, slipping it on in one fluid motion, not even sparing him a glance as you stalked toward the kitchen.
“To make a goddamn sandwich,” you snapped over your shoulder.
And then Bucky was left there, shirtless and half-hard, with the call pressed to his ear and the echo of your frustration ringing louder than the goddamn phone ever did.
────────────────────────
The quiet creak of the bedroom door broke through the stillness as you stood at the kitchen counter, barefoot, chewing slowly on the sandwich you’d slapped together out of spite and mild hunger. Your tiny silk robe hugged your hips, and the morning light from the window behind you cast a low, golden glow across your back.
You didn’t look up. You didn’t need to.
You could feel him watching you—feel the apology radiating off him before he even spoke.
A few seconds later, Bucky padded into the kitchen fully dressed, freshly showered, dog tags glinting faintly beneath his shirt collar. His hair was still damp, slicked back lazily with his fingers.
Your stomach twisted.
He stopped beside you, hands in his pockets, jaw tense. “It’s the team.”
You nodded, still chewing.
You didn’t need him to say it. You’d known the second that phone buzzed three times in a row.
“In the city?”
He nodded. “Watchtower. Just a briefing. Maybe recon. Shouldn’t be long.”
You nodded again, finishing the bite and setting the crust on the plate. The silence stretched.
Bucky leaned in, crowding into your space slightly like he always did when he needed you to ground him. “You angry?”
You sighed, licking a crumb from your bottom lip. Then you turned, finally facing him, and your arms slid easily around his neck.
He exhaled the moment you touched him—like that one gesture released the tension wrapped around his ribs.
“No,” you murmured, voice quiet but firm. “I’m not angry.”
His arms circled your waist, pulling you flush against him. “You sure?”
You nodded into his shoulder. “I know what I signed up for. You’re out there saving the world.”
He pulled back just enough to look at you, brows furrowed, voice softer now. “Still. Doesn’t mean I don’t hate leaving.”
You looked up at him for a long beat, reading the guilt in his eyes. Then, deadpan:
“Well. You did spend the last ten minutes of our morning trying to ignore your phone while balls-deep in me. I’d call that balance.”
He huffed a low, surprised laugh, forehead dropping to yours. “Jesus Christ.”
You shrugged, lips twitching. “Hey. You asked.”
He kissed you, slow and lingering, and whispered against your mouth, “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
You pulled back just enough to give him that classic stare—the flat one that usually made Bob flinch.
“Honestly?” you said, voice dry. “Just the luck of the draw, hon.”
Bucky barked out a real laugh this time, low and raspy. “That sounds about right.”
You smiled—small, real—then leaned in and brushed a kiss to the corner of his mouth.
He didn’t move. Didn’t pull away. His hand trailed down your spine, fingers resting at the hem of your robe, his lips ghosting along your jaw now.
“I told them I’d be there in fifteen.”
“Mmhm.”
“But the drive’s only ten.”
You hummed, finishing your sip of water, eyes moving to your sandwich.
“So,” he murmured, mouth back at your ear now, voice dipping low, “technically that gives us five minutes to finish what we started.”
You turned your head, meeting his gaze under lowered lashes.
The look in his eyes was full of hope. And want. And a little desperation.
You kissed him—once, slow and sultry—letting him feel your mouth move over his.
Then you pulled back, just enough to whisper against his lips, “Mm. No.”
He blinked. “What?”
You turned, picking your sandwich back up and walking away toward the couch. “You already finished once today. Let a girl eat.”
Behind you, Bucky groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “You’re evil.”
“And yet, here you are,” you called over your shoulder, settling down and flipping through the remote like your thighs weren’t still sticky from him.
He watched you for a second longer, eyes lingering like he was committing you to memory. Then he sighed, picked up his jacket, and headed for the door.
“Call me after?” you said casually.
He looked back, already halfway out.
“Always.”
────────────────────────
The conference room in the Watchtower was, unfortunately, real. Sterile and over-lit with its polished black table and transparent display screens, it felt more like the waiting room of a tech-startup funeral than the nerve center of the New Avengers.
Bucky sat at the far end of the table, jaw clenched, half-listening as Val paced in front of a projected graph that looked like it was bleeding red. His phone buzzed once in his pocket—his eyes flicked down—but it wasn’t you, and the hollow ache behind his ribs twisted a little deeper.
This was the thing that had pulled him away. Not a mission. Not a world-ending threat. Just PR bullshit.
Val tapped the screen with her manicured finger like it had personally offended her. “The numbers are bad. Public trust in the New Avengers is declining, and fast. People don’t like what they don’t recognize. And right now, you’re a bunch of strangers with messy optics and zero cohesion.”
At her side, Mel nodded without looking up from her tablet. “Engagement down 22% week-over-week. Headlines are skewing nostalgic. Keywords trending: ‘wish Cap was back,’ ‘where’s the heart,’ and ‘vigilante vibes.’”
Yelena lounged back in her chair like she’d rather be anywhere else. Her feet were propped on the table’s edge, one boot bouncing with slow, deliberate disinterest. “Maybe they’re just mourning the glory days,” she muttered, twisting her gum around her finger. “Old team got shiny deaths and glossy documentaries. We get memes.”
Ava, seated across from her, gave a quiet snort. “We’re not here to trend. We’re here to finish missions.”
Val didn’t even blink. “You’re here to represent global security and inspire public trust. And without that trust, you’re nothing more than privately-funded vigilantes in almost matching gear.”
“I like our gear,” Alexei rumbled helpfully from the end, arms crossed over his chest like a stubborn bear.
Val spared him a look. “You’re the closest thing we have to comic relief, Alexei. Lean into it.”
“Is that what they call ‘noble heroism’ now?” he huffed.
Walker sat ramrod straight, jaw working, his suit perfectly zipped. “You think Cap worried about popularity? We’re not running a fashion campaign.”
“No,” Val said flatly. “But Cap didn’t publicly decapitate someone with a shield on live television either.”
Yelena snorted. “Yikes.”
John’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.
“Point is,” Val continued, “you all need a rebrand. Yelena—your personality makes you relatable. Media loves you. You’ll handle most interviews.”
Yelena rolled her eyes. “Great. I’ll practice my ‘Good Morning, America’ smile.”
“Ava,” Val said, turning, “your trauma narrative plays well. But lean into redemption. Soft lighting. No more disappearing mid-interview.”
Ava’s response was a flat stare. “I’ll try not to phase through my own dignity.”
Val didn’t even acknowledge the jab.
“John,” she said, and his head snapped up like a soldier awaiting orders. “Less cowboy, more Captain. Smile more. No threats on-camera. Pretend you like people.”
He scoffed under his breath, muttering something about “hand-holding and fairy tales.”
“Alexei,” she said, deadpan, “people like the Soviet uncle bit. Keep it up.”
Alexei beamed.
“Bob, you’re doing fine. Stay polite. And no more jokes about punching through tanks, they’re fact-checking you.”
Bob looked vaguely hurt. “It was metaphorical.”
Val finally turned her gaze to Bucky, her expression shifting slightly—not warmer, but sharper, more calculated. She paced a slow step closer to where he sat, hands clasped behind her back like a politician delivering bad news with a smile.
“You, Barnes, are the key,” she said simply. “You’re the most recognized face on this team, and not just because of your past as the Winter Soldier.”
She gestured toward the screen behind her, now displaying a montage of Bucky’s appearances—post-congressional interviews, old wartime footage, newer press photos where he stood stoically beside Sam.
“You were a war hero before you were ever the Winter Soldier. Sergeant James Barnes, the Howling Commando, the man who fought beside Captain America during the most iconic conflict of the 20th century. And, until very recently, a U.S. Congressman advocating for post-snap veteran reform. Your file reads like a patriotic fantasy novel.”
Bucky didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. But something in his jaw ticked.
Val leaned in a little, her voice softening, but not with kindness—just control.
“What we need now is that Bucky. The leader. The charming, respectful, golden-era face people want to believe in. Friendly. Accessible. And most importantly…”
She paused.
“Available.”
That made Bucky’s eyes lift, expression tightening. “You do know I have a girlfriend, right? I’m in a committed relationship.”
Val didn’t miss a beat. “One the public doesn’t know about. And doesn’t need to.”
He sat forward slightly, steel entering his voice. “You’re asking me to lie.”
“No,” Val said, waving a hand. “I’m asking you to protect her. Think of it this way—if no one knows who she is, no one can leverage her. No threats. No gossip. No crossfire. It’s smarter this way.”
Mel tapped her tablet again. “We’ve already scrubbed mentions, just in case. Nothing linking her name to yours comes up in connection to the New Avengers.”
Bucky clenched his jaw. He hated this. Every inch of it.
“Why is it so important that I look ‘available’?” he asked flatly.
Val’s smile sharpened. “Because people want to like you. And people like what they want. It’s a psychological pull. You become more desirable, more approachable—someone they imagine they could know. That they could be with. It builds trust, makes you more likable. Marketable.”
He stared at her for a long beat.
“You want to make me into a fantasy.”
“I want to make you into a symbol,” Val corrected coolly. “And symbols don’t get girlfriends.”
Across the room, Yelena let out a low, mocking whistle. “Wow. That’s not creepy at all.”
Ava shook her head. “What’s next? Tinder profiles and fan edits?”
John rolled his eyes. “It’s optics. We all knew this came with the job.”
But Bucky barely heard them. His mind was already drifting—to you, still barefoot in the kitchen, silk robe sliding over bare thighs, chewing your sandwich with zero interest in who he was to the rest of the world. Just who he was to you.
And now, he had to pretend you didn’t exist.
He didn’t respond. Just sat back in his chair and regretted every second he hadn’t spent in your arms this morning.
────────────────────────
The Watchtower always smelled like metal and over-sterilized air. You hated it.
Fluorescents buzzed overhead as you stepped off the elevator, holding a small, zippered pouch in your hand—the charger Bucky had forgotten, again, even though you reminded him three times before he left.
The place felt like a cross between a tech firm and a concrete bunker: all gray walls, touchscreen doors, and state-mandated potted plants.
The main floor—what passed for a communal living space—was half chaos, half nap zone. Yelena was sprawled on one end of the sectional couch, flipping through something on her tablet and eating dried mango slices from a bag she probably stole from someone else.
Ava stood leaning against the wall nearby, arms crossed, watching the room like she was waiting for someone to step out of line so she could phase them through a floor. Bob was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a comic book held way too close to his face, murmuring what you assumed was commentary under his breath.
Alexei was telling a story. Loudly. And probably badly.
Bucky spotted you first. He was standing near the open kitchen area, talking with Mel—Val’s too-efficient assistant who always looked like she was plotting the next step of a corporate coup.
His entire expression changed when he saw you. The tension in his shoulders dropped a little, the corner of his mouth lifted, and for a second, he didn’t look like the unofficial leader of a barely-tethered government strike team. He just looked like your boyfriend.
You handed him the charger without ceremony.
“You left this.”
He took it with a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck like it was the first time he’d ever been caught forgetting something (it wasn't). “Thanks. Thought I had it packed.”
“Nope,” you said, popping the “p.”
You didn’t mean to stay. You weren’t supposed to linger. But Bucky motioned for you to walk with him, and you didn’t say no.
Up close, you noticed the tired edge in his face. Like whatever conversation he’d been having before you arrived had worn him down more than a mission ever could.
He told you about it—about Val’s latest brainstorm. That the team needed to be more “media-friendly.” That they wanted him to lean into the good ol’ days: Sergeant James “Bucky” Barnes, WWII hero, former Congressman, the smile-that-could-end-wars poster boy.
You listened without interrupting, arms crossed, eyes squinting toward the ceiling as you tried to think through what he was actually saying.
When he finished, you just shrugged.
“Well,” you said, “sounds like when celebrities fake relationships before a movie comes out. Or pretend they’re single to sell tickets.”
Bucky blinked. “How do you even know that?”
You gave him a flat look, expression unreadable. “I was born in 1995, babe. Not the fucking 40s.”
Behind him, Walker snorted loudly. He’d been pretending not to listen, but of course he was.
“Damn,” he said, leaning against the fridge like he was waiting for someone to ask for his input (nobody did). “My wife would’ve never let me get away with that.”
You turned to look at him. Not annoyed. Not even angry. Just blank. Like staring at a particularly ugly lamp in a hotel room.
“That’s why she’s your ex-wife,” you said, voice calm. “And good for her.”
Yelena, without looking up from her tablet, let out a noise that might’ve been a laugh. Ava smirked quietly. Even Alexei stopped mid-sentence to grin like someone had dropped his favorite sitcom back into rotation.
Bucky watched all of it happen with a complicated kind of amusement. But it didn’t last.
Because then he had to say the next part.
He rubbed his hands down your arms, slow and hesitant, like bracing you.
“Val advised…” he started, then caught himself. “She recommended that maybe—for now—you don’t come around the tower. Or get seen with us in general.”
He didn’t say “hide.” He didn’t have to.
Your face didn’t change much. Not really. But he saw it. That tiny prickle of tension in your jaw. The slight shift in your eyes when you looked away from him for just a second too long.
You muttered something low. A lazy, “Whatever.” But the way you pulled your arms away said everything.
“I need to go anyway.”
Bucky stepped closer, voice soft but strained. “You don’t have to leave right away.”
You didn’t answer right away. Just looked at him, eyes unreadable, lips pressed in that almost-smile that wasn’t really a smile at all.
Then you leaned in and kissed his cheek, slow and warm, the way you always did when you were trying not to let the weight of something show.
“See you at home,” you murmured.
Your voice dipped at the end, barely above a whisper as you pulled back. “If you’re still allowed to come home, anyway.”
It wasn’t angry.
It wasn’t bitter.
It was worse.
It was tired.
Before he could answer, before he could say anything at all, you turned and walked to the elevator, the soft sound of your footsteps swallowed by the Watchtower’s chaos.
He didn’t follow.
And that hurt more than you cared to admit.
────────────────────────
It was slow. Almost imperceptible, at first.
A missed call here. A text left on “read” longer than usual. A two-day mission becoming a four-day stretch at the tower. No big fights. No yelling. No doors slammed.
Just quiet.
But that was the thing about quiet—Bucky had lived in it for too long. He knew its weight. Knew how it filled rooms like fog, hiding the way things shifted underneath.
Now, it was in everything.
He sat on the edge of his bed in the Watchtower, staring at the wall, phone still in hand from a message he hadn’t sent. His thoughts weren’t here—weren’t in this too-bright room, or with Val’s next debrief, or on the press event they had the next morning.
They were in Brooklyn.
Your shared apartment. The one with the soft light and creaky floorboards, and the tiny espresso machine you swore was better than anything Bucky had ever tasted. That place was home. It smelled like your lavender detergent and your coconut shampoo and your weirdly specific collection of candles labeled things like “wet grass” and “Scandinavian night.”
His body ached to be there. Just... there. On the couch. Next to you.
He used to spend three days a week here, tops. Two, if he could push it. The rest he’d guard selfishly for you—days spent sleeping beside you, cooking breakfast together, reading on opposite ends of the couch while your foot found his thigh and stayed there. You’d talk to him, let the silence stretch and snap and re-stitch. You never pushed. You never pried.
You were his quiet. The right kind of quiet.
Now? Now he barely remembered the last night he’d actually fallen asleep next to you. Really slept. Not just crashed on the bed after some back-to-back PR gig that left him in a suit with aching teeth from smiling too much.
He hated it.
He hated talking to the press, hated the way they asked questions like they already had the answers written. He hated being told to laugh, to charm, to tell stories that didn’t feel like his anymore. He hated Val’s smug reminders that likability mattered. That perception mattered.
Sometimes, he wished he’d never gone to Congress. That he hadn’t let convinced himself into the platform, the speeches, the idea that he could do good with a microphone instead of a mission.
Sometimes, he wished he’d just… faded.
Found a quiet nine-to-five. Something with a routine. Something boring.
Something normal.
Like you had.
You worked corporate communications. You clocked in and out. You had a clean desk, ergonomic chair, sarcastic co-workers. You went for runs in the park on weekends, had lunch dates with your girlfriends, took yoga classes when you weren’t too exhausted from the week.
You lived in the world like a real person.
And he’d wanted that so badly. Not for himself—but with you.
Because you were his normal. His constant. The stillness that didn’t suffocate. The grounding he’d clung to after years of floating through someone else’s chaos.
But now?
Now he didn’t know how to reach for it without dragging it into the spotlight with him.
And every time he came home and found you already asleep, back to him, or out with friends instead of waiting, or just… quiet in a way that wasn’t yours anymore—
He felt it.
The drift.
And he hated it.
────────────────────────
You didn’t talk about it.
You didn’t let yourself think about it.
The distance. His absence. The too-quiet apartment, the untouched half of the bed, the silence when your phone didn’t buzz all day. It wasn’t worth thinking about. People were dying in the world—actual, breathing, bleeding people—and you were going to be pathetic about your boyfriend missing dinner?
No.
Absolutely the fuck not.
So you cleaned. You ran. You worked. You answered emails with snide internal commentary and booked your usual yoga class for Tuesday even though you hated the new instructor’s voice. You refused to call it coping.
It was just living.
And tonight? Tonight was fine.
It was Saturday. He’d said he’d be back for dinner.
You didn’t text to confirm because you didn’t want to hover. Didn’t want to be needy. He’d said it, he’d meant it, and you would trust that. Like always.
So, you cooked.
Beef stew—slow and thick and comforting. Heavenly mashed potatoes, made with way more butter than you’d ever admit to aloud. Roasted vegetables, because Bucky needed something green on his plate or he’d sulk. It was all simmering gently on the stove while you lay curled on the couch in your oldest pair of yoga shorts and a hoodie, eating straight from a pint of mint chocolate chip.
It was fine.
Okay, it was your cheat day.
Okay, you’d had more cheat days than planned recently.
You’d also bought a new pair of jeans in the next size up, but that was irrelevant. You were not stress-eating. You were just... adapting to your changing lifestyle.
Had Bucky noticed?
The thought came and went before you could kill it.
He hadn’t said anything. Not that you needed him to. But still.
The sound of the TV murmured in the background, some fluff piece news channel you’d forgotten to mute while scrolling your phone. Something about the New Avengers. You tuned in just enough to glance at the footage—drone shots of a crumbling government facility somewhere in Eastern Europe, flames curling up the side of a building like hands.
You recognized the team instantly. Yelena, tossing her baton mid-air like it annoyed her to carry it. Ava disappearing through smoke. John looking way too pleased with himself.
And then—there he was.
Bucky.
His tactical suit was soot-streaked, sleeves rolled up, hair tied back, face streaked with ash. He was helping someone—no, two people—down the fire escape, guiding them through smoke with one hand steady on their backs.
Then it happened.
One of the women—civilian, blonde, maybe late 20s—turned and kissed him on the cheek. A hard, grateful kind of kiss. The kind that left a smudge of ash on his jaw.
She clung to him like he’d saved her life.
Maybe he had.
And Bucky? He smiled.
Not his press smile. Not the tight, practiced one. But something else—softer. Real.
You blinked.
Let out a breath through your nose. “Jesus Christ.”
It wasn’t like he kissed her. It wasn’t like he meant anything by it. She’d probably thought she was about to die, and then Bucky Barnes dragged her out of a collapsing building, and she just… reacted.
You weren’t jealous.
You were just being dramatic.
This was not about you.
But somehow, that one moment served to curdle the rest of the evening.
You changed the channel without saying anything, the ice cream melting slowly in your hands. The scent of stew floated in from the kitchen, warm and rich, but you didn’t move.
Dinner would keep.
You weren't sure if he would.
────────────────────────
It was past ten by the time Bucky stepped into the apartment.
The hallway had been dark. The front door had creaked louder than usual. And the only light inside was the kitchen, glowing soft and golden like a memory. It lit the space just enough to reveal the forgotten dinner plates covered in cling film on the counter, the quiet hum of the microwave keeping your meal warm—like it was still waiting.
But you weren’t.
His breath caught in his throat as he toed off his boots, silence wrapping around him like a punishment.
He said six.
Not “around six,” not “if I can swing it.” Just six. Sharp. He said it with his hands on your waist and his lips in your hair the night before. Said it like he meant it.
And now it was 10:18.
He could barely look at the time. The guilt clawed at him, sharp and low and constant. Every second he’d spent at the tower—every extra minute talking to reporters, doing damage control, smiling on cue—had eaten at him like acid.
He was supposed to be here.
In your shared space. In this soft, too-warm apartment that smelled faintly like roasted vegetables and your perfume.
And the worst part wasn’t just that he’d missed dinner. It was that he knew exactly what you’d done in his absence.
You wouldn’t have texted. Wouldn’t have called. You would’ve made his favorite meal anyway. You would’ve set out two bowls. You would’ve eaten alone, probably on the couch, probably in silence. And you would’ve told yourself—it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine—like you had any interest in believing it anymore.
The bathroom door clicked open.
He froze.
You stepped out, already dressed for bed—an oversized button-down, sleeves rolled up to your elbows. Your hair was twisted up and pinned in the messy, practical way you always wore it when you were done for the day. Slippers scuffed softly against the floor as you walked into the hall, blinking slightly at the light.
You stopped when you saw him.
Both of you just stood there for a moment—frozen in that strange tension where neither of you knew which role to play yet. He looked at you like he didn’t know if he was allowed to speak.
Then he remembered how to breathe.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said quietly, voice rougher than he meant. Like he’d been holding it in all night. “I—I got caught up. I didn’t mean to—”
You didn’t answer right away.
Just blinked at him. No surprise on your face. No anger.
Just quiet.
Then you gave a little shrug—small and tired, the kind of shrug that said what else is new?—and turned toward the kitchen.
“There’s food in the microwave if you’re still hungry,” you said simply.
And then you walked past him.
No kiss. No touch. No sarcastic jab.
Just your scent, and the ache of knowing that he wasn’t even sure if he was following you to the bedroom or to the guest room tonight.
The door clicked softly behind you.
And Bucky stood alone in the glow of a kitchen he didn’t deserve.
────────────────────────
It was almost midnight when Bucky finally walked into the bedroom.
Not because he was tired. He’d been tired for hours.
He just needed to be sure you were asleep.
The microwave had long since gone silent. He’d eaten half the stew in distracted mouthfuls, barely tasting it, then spent an hour sitting in the living room in the dark, elbows on his knees, forehead resting on steepled hands. The guilt gnawed at him—not loud or dramatic, just steady, like water dripping against stone. It never stopped.
He pushed open the door slowly, as if afraid it would creak too loud. The room smelled like your shampoo, your skin, your cocoa body butter. His sanctuary. The place he used to walk into and feel immediate calm.
Now it just reminded him of everything he was missing, even while it was still right in front of him.
You were already in bed.
Covers pulled halfway up. Lights dimmed. Hair pinned back in the soft way you wore it only at night. You slept with your back to the door—back to him—and it made something inside him pinch.
He hesitated in the doorway, watching the gentle rise and fall of your breath, the way your fingers curled under your pillow. Still. Quiet. Entirely out of reach.
He stripped silently, down to boxers and a threadbare black t-shirt, and slid beneath the sheets with a care that bordered on reverent.
Then—inch by inch—he moved closer.
It was tentative. Like approaching a deer in the woods. Like if he moved too fast, you might flinch and disappear.
His arm slid around your waist. Cautious. Testing.
You didn’t move.
So he let his chest press against your back, warm and slow. Let his knees curve behind yours, let his other hand reach up and tuck gently under your ribcage, pulling you flush.
Then—finally—he buried his face in the crook of your neck. Breathed you in like he hadn’t seen home in weeks.
A beat passed.
Then another.
Still, you didn’t stir. No tensing. No pulling away.
Just the soft, subconscious hum of sleep.
And that—that tiny, unconscious mercy—was enough to let him exhale for the first time all night.
It wasn’t much.
But it was something.
And he held on to it like it might save him.
────────────────────────
The apartment smelled like detergent and coffee. Morning light streamed in through the windows, dust catching in the gold. On the surface, it looked like a Sunday—peaceful, slow, quiet.
But it wasn’t.
You sat on the couch, folding laundry with the precision of someone who needed something—anything—to occupy your hands. T-shirt, fold. Socks, fold. Hoodie, fold. The pile on the coffee table grew in neat little stacks, organized by drawer and category.
Bucky leaned in the doorway, watching you. Barefoot, hair tied up, one of his sweatshirts hanging loose around your shoulders. It should’ve been comforting. Familiar.
It wasn’t.
He moved to the kitchen, filled two mugs with coffee, brought yours over without a word. Set it down next to your knee. You gave a nod, murmured “thanks,” without looking up.
His stomach twisted.
He sat across from you, mug cradled in both hands, trying not to overthink it. Trying to act normal. Pretend that everything didn’t feel like it was three steps left of what it used to be.
“So,” he said, voice easy, like he was just easing into the day with you. “You still going to that yoga class on Tuesdays?”
You didn’t look at him. Just kept folding a pair of socks, thumbs pressing the fabric into place. “Yeah.”
He waited for more.
Nothing.
“You like it?”
You shrugged, moved onto a fitted sheet. “It’s fine.”
Bucky nodded slowly, feeling the distance like a cold draft under a closed door.
That was how you talked to people you didn’t want to get stuck in a conversation with. To strangers. To coworkers who overshared. To the people you were polite to but had no desire to know.
He remembered how your voice used to sound when it was just the two of you—low, dry, threaded with sarcasm and occasional sweetness you tried hard to hide. He remembered the way your eyes used to flick up mid-conversation just to check that he was still smiling. He remembered you saying, “I hate everyone but you,” with a hand on his chest and a smirk you couldn't keep down.
Now?
Now you sounded like someone tolerating him.
And it broke something inside his chest that he didn’t know how to fix.
He took a sip of his coffee, staring into the steam, words catching behind his teeth.
You weren’t angry.
You weren’t cruel.
You were just... gone.
And it was killing him.
The silence had stretched too long. Not peaceful. Not content. Just tense.
Bucky watched you fold a hoodie and set it aside like it mattered. Like it was worth more attention than him. He had tried—coffee, questions, anything to coax out that sliver of warmth you used to give him without thinking.
Now it was measured. Distant. Like he was on the other side of something neither of you had noticed building until it was too high to climb over.
He stared into his coffee like it might offer an answer. It didn’t.
So finally—quietly, but not gently—he asked, “Are we okay?”
You froze mid-fold.
Your hands stilled, holding one of his long-sleeve shirts in your lap, fingers curled around the soft fabric.
And then, for the first time that morning, you looked at him.
Not a glance. Not a nod. You looked at him.
There was a frown on your lips. A deep furrow between your brows. The kind of look you gave when something was broken and you weren’t sure whether to fix it or walk away from it.
“I don’t know,” you said honestly.
The words hit harder than he was ready for.
You didn’t know.
And that terrified him.
He nodded slowly, like he was trying to process it, but nothing quite stuck. His hands tightened around the mug in his grip.
You looked down again, slowly folding the shirt in your lap. Your voice dropped, softer now. Barely above the hum of the fridge.
“I try not to think about it.”
Bucky’s throat tightened.
You weren’t trying to hurt him. But it hurt anyway.
Because that was the truth of it, wasn’t it? Neither of you had talked about it. You’d just lived in the quiet space between exhaustion and effort, pretending the love was enough to keep everything from shifting.
You still loved him. He knew that.
But love wasn't fixing it. Not when you felt like strangers in the same home.
“I miss you,” he said, voice rough. “Even when I’m right here. I miss you.”
You didn’t look up.
Didn’t answer.
Just smoothed your fingers across the folded shirt like maybe if you kept them busy, the truth wouldn’t get too loud.
He wanted to reach across the coffee table, wanted to take your hands, wanted to say something to undo it all.
But neither of you were good at this part.
You were good at sarcasm. At quiet nights. At sex in the kitchen and lazy Sundays with pancakes and him pretending not to burn the bacon.
You weren’t good at asking for what you needed.
And right now, neither of you knew how to say what came next.
So the silence stretched again—thicker now, heavier.
The laundry was folded.
That’s what you clung to, bizarrely, like it meant something. Order. Control. You stacked the last shirt on the table and smoothed your palms down your thighs, blinking at nothing in particular.
You hadn’t spoken since I miss you.
Not because you didn’t want to.
Because you didn’t trust what might come out if you did.
Across from you, Bucky hadn’t moved much either. Just sat with the cooling coffee in his hands, elbows on his knees, staring at the place you used to lean into him without hesitation.
The silence thickened until it felt like breathing through gauze.
You stood up, grabbed your coffee, and walked into the kitchen. You weren’t thirsty. You just needed something to do.
Behind you, Bucky’s voice broke the quiet.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” he said.
Your back tensed. The mug clinked slightly against the counter.
“I didn’t want this either,” you said, not turning around.
“You used to talk to me,” he murmured. “Even when you were annoyed. Even when you were tired. You still talked.”
You closed your eyes.
“It’s hard to talk,” you said, voice flat, “when you’re not around to listen.”
The armchair scraped back against the floor. Footsteps. Closer.
“I am listening,” he said, more desperate now. “I know I’ve been— I’ve been stretched. But I’m here now. Just talk to me.”
You turned around slowly, coffee mug still in your hand. You looked at him, really looked. And something inside you cracked—not because you didn’t love him.
Because you did.
That was the problem.
“I don’t want to be another thing you manage, Bucky.”
He froze.
You shook your head slowly. “You manage the media. You manage the team. You manage your image. I don’t want to be another box you tick at the end of the day.”
“I don’t think of you like that—”
“I know,” you interrupted softly. “That’s what makes it worse.”
He stared at you, helpless.
“I don’t doubt you love me,” you continued. “But I can’t keep living in the spaces between your obligations. You show up late, you leave early. You touch me like you’re scared I’ll vanish. And maybe I will, because I don’t know how much more of this I can take without losing myself.”
Your voice didn’t shake.
Your hands didn’t clench.
You weren’t yelling.
But you might as well have torn your heart out and set it on the counter between you.
Bucky swallowed hard. “So what? You’re done?”
You looked at him, and for the first time, there was no sarcasm. No tight-lipped smile. Just a hollow kind of truth.
“I’m tired,” you said. “And I don’t know how to not be tired anymore.”
He opened his mouth. Closed it again.
Your voice dropped lower. “I can’t be the only one holding the thread, babe.”
The silence returned. Bigger now.
You stepped around him, walked to the bedroom, and closed the door behind you—not slammed. Just shut.
Soft. But final.
While Bucky stood in the kitchen, frozen.
The coffee in his mug had gone cold.
The apartment felt foreign, like he’d wandered into someone else’s life and forgotten how to get back to his own.
He sat down on the edge of the couch, hands in his hair.
He couldn’t lose this. He wouldn’t.
You were it. His peace. His pulse. The only thing in his life that ever made him feel real.
He didn’t care what Val said, or what public image they wanted to build, or how many staged smiles he had to fake for camera crews.
If it meant losing you?
Then it wasn’t worth anything.
And he would fix it.
He didn’t know how yet.
But he would.
Because if this ended, if you walked away and didn’t look back—
He’d be nothing but a name in a file again.
And he’d already spent too much of his life feeling like a ghost.
────────────────────────
Bucky had never cared for formal events, especially not since becoming the public face of a team that didn't particularly want one. But tonight wasn’t about optics. It wasn’t about strategy or good PR.
It was about you.
The invitation had landed on Val’s desk a week ago—a high-profile charity gala for Clean Futures, an international organization funding mental health programs for post-Blip survivors. Your company had a long-standing partnership with the group, which meant you’d be there. Representing. Smiling for photos. Dressed to kill.
And you hadn’t told him.
You didn’t need to. He hadn’t earned that kind of openness in weeks.
So Bucky had taken the opportunity and run with it.
He stood in front of the full-length mirror in the Watchtower’s prep room, tugging at the lapels of the black suit that Mel had somehow sourced last-minute. The cut was sharp, classic, tailored to emphasize broad shoulders and trim waist. His hair was slicked back, jaw clean-shaven, cufflinks engraved with the new Avengers insignia.
It felt like armor.
It wasn’t for the cameras. It wasn’t for the team.
It was for you.
Because maybe if he showed up—not as a soldier or a symbol or a ghost of a man who couldn’t keep promises—but as your man, he might finally break the wall you’d built brick by slow, exhausted brick.
"You look like a magazine ad for heartbreak,” Yelena said flatly as she passed him in the hallway, already halfway into a glittering black gown. “That is not a compliment.”
Bucky didn’t flinch. “You know she’s gonna be there?”
“Do I look like her personal assistant?” she replied. “You’re the one who made Val jump through hoops to drag us into this.”
“It's for a good cause,” he said.
Yelena narrowed her eyes. “Uh-huh. Sure. Purely selfless.”
Ava walked by next, heels clicking. “You’re nervous,” she noted, glancing at him sideways.
“I’m not—”
“You’re sweating through a thousand dollars worth of tailoring. That’s nerves.”
He rolled his eyes.
Alexei, coming down the stairs in a tux that looked like it belonged to a different century, clapped him on the back. “You want advice? Make her laugh. Women like a man who makes them laugh.”
“Or,” Bob said quietly, trailing behind them with his bowtie untied and suit wrinkled, “you could just apologize. That works too.”
Bucky ignored them all as he fastened his bowtie and adjusted the cuffs one last time.
He didn’t know if you’d speak to him.
But he’d be damned if he stood across a ballroom from you and didn’t try.
────────────────────────
The camera flashes started the moment the New Avengers stepped out of the sleek black convoy outside the grand hotel.
Reporters lined the ropes, shouting names and questions, bulbs flashing like strobe lights in a storm. Val stood smug just off to the side, soaking it in like she’d orchestrated the whole damn thing.
Inside, the ballroom was already humming with rich voices, tinkling glassware, soft jazz echoing beneath a grand chandelier. Politicians, CEOs, heads of NGOs, tech royalty—all of them looking to shake hands and write checks.
Yelena rolled her eyes as a photographer barked her name, whispering something to Bob, who stayed glued to her side. Ava immediately veered away from the attention. John lapped up the press like a plant under a grow light. Alexei was already loudly asking where the vodka was.
But Bucky wasn’t looking at the cameras.
He wasn’t smiling.
He was scanning the ballroom, eyes darting over sequined gowns and tuxedoed silhouettes with laser focus. Looking. Searching. Waiting.
And then he saw you.
It hit him like a sucker punch.
You descended the marble staircase on the far side of the ballroom, a vision in crimson. He hadn’t seen the dress before—he would’ve remembered. The deep red clung to your body like it knew exactly where you wanted to be touched.
It shimmered subtly under the chandelier light, catching the gold in your skin, the delicate slope of your collarbone, the shape of your legs moving with slow, elegant precision.
You were talking to someone—corporate, probably. Networking. Smooth and composed, all polished charm and business poise. The person in front of you was smiling wide, laughing, but your expression was mild, professional. Exactly what it needed to be.
But then—
Like you felt him.
You turned.
Your eyes swept the crowd and locked on him like gravity itself had bent the light to make it happen.
Bucky froze.
Time narrowed.
The din of the gala dulled. His heartbeat went hot in his ears. All he could see was you—standing there in that goddamn dress, looking like a memory he hadn’t earned and a future he didn’t deserve.
And for a second, just one second, your expression broke.
Just a little.
Recognition. Surprise. And something else—something softer. Sharper.
Then, just as quickly, it was gone.
You turned back to your conversation, spine straightening, mouth curving into that polite smile you wore when you wanted to end something without causing a scene.
Bucky stood rooted in place, jaw clenched, hands curled at his sides.
Right.
He’d told you not to be seen near them. Told you to stay away, for safety. For PR. For a million reasons that didn’t mean a damn thing anymore.
And now?
He couldn’t just walk up to you. Couldn’t confess his love in front of the board members and donors and paparazzi. He knew you. Knew you’d hate it. Knew it would make you glare instead of melt.
So he’d have to find another way.
One that would mean something.
One that would be yours.
And Bucky Barnes had never been more ready to fight for something in his goddamn life.
────────────────────────
Bucky spent most of the night like a man caught in the wrong timeline.
The team had dispersed—mingling, sipping wine, taking photos they didn’t want to take. Yelena charmed a table of older donors by being blunt and hilarious.
Ava was already in a corner having a serious conversation about resource allocation. Bob, somehow, had gotten pulled into a group selfie with a senator. Even John had managed to slap on a half-decent smile and talk to two reporters without saying anything arrogant.
But Bucky?
Bucky stood there.
Dark suit, jaw clenched, drink untouched in his hand.
Watching you.
You moved through the room like you weren’t breaking his heart a little with every step. Laughing politely at something someone said. Holding your glass just so. The fabric of that crimson dress whispering around your ankles as you walked.
Every now and then, your eyes flicked to his. Brief. Electric. Then gone again.
He didn’t know what to do with himself.
And then—heels clicking, voice like an ice pick—Val appeared beside him.
“You’re up.”
Bucky blinked. “Up for what?”
Val gave a thin, dry smile. “Speech. On behalf of the New Avengers. Seeing as the rest of your team has at least attempted to behave like functioning public figures, and you’ve done nothing but stand here looking like an emotionally repressed Greek statue all night.”
He blinked again. “I wasn’t told—”
“You are now,” she interrupted, already turning away. “It’s already been cleared with the host. Mic’s ready. Try not to say anything too traumatic.”
And with that, she pivoted away, already bored of him.
Public speaking. God help him.
But then his eyes found you again.
Still glowing under the chandeliers. Still you.
And he thought, maybe this is it.
He walked onto the stage to the quiet hum of low conversation and the gentle clinking of glasses. The host introduced him with a few polite words—"Representative of the New Avengers, veteran of WW2..."—and then stepped aside, leaving Bucky with the mic and a ballroom full of people who had no idea what he was about to say.
He gripped the podium tighter than he meant to.
Cleared his throat.
You were near the center, now seated at a table with your company’s execs. And your eyes were already on him.
God.
He hadn’t even started yet, and he was wrecked.
He cleared his throat. “Good evening.”
A few polite nods from the audience.
“I’m not… great at speeches,” he started, eyes sweeping the crowd once—but only once—before settling back on you.
“But I’m honored to speak tonight. Because this cause… matters. Mental health support for Blip survivors—that’s not just a talking point. It’s life-saving.”
People leaned in.
“I’ve seen firsthand what coming back can do to someone,” he said slowly, carefully. “What it feels like to be displaced. Lost. Like time’s moved on without you, and you’re just… dragging behind it, trying to catch up. And the worst part of that isn’t the confusion. It’s the loneliness.”
His voice was low, careful. This part, at least, he could manage.
“I think we talk a lot about the logistics of the Blip—people gone, people returned, the chaos. But we don’t talk enough about what it did to the people who stayed. Or the ones who came back and didn’t recognize the world anymore. People who survived, but didn’t feel alive.”
You shifted slightly in your seat. His eyes never left you.
“And I’m saying this not just as an Avenger or a veteran… but as someone who’s been there. Someone who came back from the dead—twice. And there were days I didn’t know how to keep going. I’ve spent years working on being more than what happened to me. I’ve sat in rooms trying to explain why it still hurts. Trying to find meaning.”
A pause.
“And I wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t had someone to come home to.”
That’s when the shift happened.
Eyes widened. A few murmurs from the crowd. Even Val froze near the back.
“I’m not… great with this kind of thing,” Bucky said, adjusting the mic slightly. “But I’m standing here in front of all of you, not because I’m part of a superhero team, or because someone handed me a title. I’m standing here because there is a woman in this room who keeps me tethered.”
He didn’t blink.
Didn’t glance away from you, not even once.
“She’s my rock. My clarity. The only person who ever looked at me and saw something worth saving. She didn’t ask me to be a hero. She just asked me to be me. And somehow… she still loved what she saw.”
A breath.
“She is the reason I believe I deserve peace.”
Your eyes were locked on him, wide, unmoving.
Some of the audience was blinking. A few whispering.
But Bucky didn’t care.
Because he wasn’t talking to them.
He was talking to you.
“I was a soldier. Then a weapon. Then a politician. Now I’m trying to be a man. And I can’t be that without her.”
He swallowed, but didn’t falter.
And for the first time in weeks, his voice felt steady. Because for once, he wasn’t hiding. Not his love. Not his pain. Not what you meant to him.
He took a breath.
Then finished, simply:
“So thank you for supporting this cause. It’s not abstract. It’s personal. For all of us.”
A pause.
Then the room erupted in applause.
But Bucky didn’t hear it.
He was still looking at you.
And for the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel the distance.
────────────────────────
The applause was still echoing faintly through the ballroom, conversations blooming again like nothing had shifted—but Bucky knew better.
Something had shifted.
He stepped off the stage and straight into the tide of well-dressed bodies. Donors, board members, media people—shaking hands, smiling, complimenting him, dropping half-formed praises about “moving” and “authentic” and “genuine vulnerability.”
But he didn’t care.
He barely registered any of it.
His eyes were scanning the room. Looking for you. Like if he could just find you, ground himself in your orbit, maybe he could believe that what he’d just done was enough.
But you weren’t by the bar. You weren’t at the staircase. You weren’t by the back exit or near the dance floor or—
Then he felt it.
A hand—your hand—sliding around his arm, fingers warm against the fabric of his sleeve.
He turned, heart already beating faster.
You didn’t say anything.
Just gave him a look.
And gently, almost imperceptibly, tugged him away from the crowd.
Bucky followed without thinking, letting you lead him through a discreet side corridor, past a curtained alcove where the sounds of the gala dulled to a hum.
And when you stopped, when you turned to face him, he opened his mouth—
But he didn’t get a word out.
Because your hands were on his face, firm and sure, pulling him down into a kiss that knocked the breath from his chest.
It wasn’t slow.
It wasn’t cautious.
It was needy. Real. Like you’d been starving for weeks and finally allowed to taste again. Like he was something you couldn’t help but want.
He melted into you with a sound that wasn’t quite a sigh, wasn’t quite a groan—just relief. One hand gripping your hip, the other tangling in your hair like he couldn’t believe this was real.
When you finally pulled back, breath warm against his lips, you didn’t let go.
Didn’t step away.
You just leaned your forehead to his and whispered, voice tinged with a half-smile—
“You’re gonna be in so much trouble.”
He huffed out something like a laugh. “Worth it.”
Your fingers lingered against his jaw.
The soft glow from the hallway barely reached the small alcove where you stood, still tucked away behind velvet drapes and polished columns. The noise of the gala felt far-off now—like another world neither of you belonged to.
Bucky wouldn't let go of you. His hands still rested on your waist like he didn’t trust the moment to last. Like if he blinked, you might fade again.
You leaned your shoulder into the wall, breathing finally steady. He looked at you—really looked at you—and reached for your hand.
“I’m gonna try,” he said, voice low, steady in the dark. “I know I’ve said it before, but this time… I mean it. I’m gonna try, really try. I don’t care how many speeches they want. I don’t care what the media says or what Val plans next. You’re it. You’re my whole damn life.”
Your lips parted, but he kept going.
“I love you,” he said. “And I know that’s not always enough to make it easy. But I want you to know that if you asked me—if you looked me in the eye right now and said to walk away from the Avengers, from all of it—”
His hand cupped the back of your neck.
“I would.”
Your heart twisted, eyes burning in that way they always did when he got too sincere.
You reached up and cupped his cheek, fingers brushing along his clean-shaven cheek, thumb skimming the line of his jaw.
“I know,” you whispered. “But you know I’d never ask that.”
He leaned into your hand, eyes fluttering shut for just a second. “Doesn’t change the fact that I would. You come first. You always do.”
You smiled, so gently he almost missed it.
“I don’t need you to walk away,” you murmured. “I just need you to walk back. To us. To me.”
He nodded. “I will.”
You kissed him again—slower this time. Like a promise. Like you were giving him something he already owned but forgot how to hold.
And when you pulled away, his mouth curved, that old smirk creeping back into place as his hands slid subtly down your back.
“You know,” he said, voice dipping, “this is a pretty dark corner. Not a lot of foot traffic.”
You snorted. “James.”
“I’m just saying,” he grinned, leaning in, “no one would see.”
You arched an eyebrow. “Keep it in your pants, Barnes.”
“What about when we get home?”
You kissed his jaw and murmured against his skin— “When we get home, Sergeant.”
His grin bloomed—lazy, boyish, free—and before you could say anything else, he kissed you again.
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information for the non-US fans of 911 or the rookie:
THE post that saved all the international 911 watchers is gone now so I’m doing my civil service by making a shitty version of one to prepare us for s7🫶🤩
And because I’ve been using this information to watch the rookie live I’m letting the girlies from the rookie fandom know too just in case cos now they’re both on abc anyways 🫡
Places you can watch 911 or the rookie live if you’re not in the US:
Daddyhd (promise it’s not 🌽) - this one is the one that’s most reliable for me personally but it takes some ad dodging till it loads
Tv24/7US
Places you can watch 911 or the rookie pretty early on after it airs (couple of hours in my experience with the rookie):
Hurawatch - this one loads up perfectly and quite quick and there are usually multiple servers so it’s great, I think you need a VPN tho
FreeTvProject- I tried this one once or twice and it was good too🫡
A good VPN:
X-VPN -link on this is to the AppStore version so if this link doesn’t work that’s why
Edit:
Only adding this here instead of its own post because I know people will probably still be directing ppl to this post for info but the person ( @jddryder ) who made the original post with a bunch of information that saved us back when 911 was on fox made a new version here and it has a bunch more info than this so if you need it I’d definitely check that out!!! <3
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Logan had rejected her in his universe to pine after Jean. Now they are both dead and he is in a new universe with that annoying fuck Wade. Seeing Y/N, the other one, in this new universe brought it all back. He needed to get away from her to protect her from the same fate her other version had to face beacause of him. Yet he feels like he can't breath without her.
Warnings: spoilers for Deadpool & Wolverine, descriptions of a panic attack, angst, implicaded age gap, horror elements, description of blood and violence, eventual fluff, eventual smut
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turnnoffyourmind
